Most summer weekends in the North End already run on one street. You walk to the farmers market on Goodwin, cut through the mural alley, pick up herbal tea and eggs, then decide whether dinner is a walk-up counter in New Center or a tasting menu two blocks off Woodward. What is new this summer is the block at Oakland Avenue and Westminster, where a vacant 9,000-square-foot grocery is about to become the missing middle of that loop. If you live here, this is the year to pay attention to the geography of it, because the corridor you already use on Saturdays is being stitched together on purpose.
One Saturday morning, one block of Goodwin
The Oakland Avenue Urban Farm has been the anchor of North End weekends for more than a decade, and it has grown to a size most Detroiters underestimate. The sprawling urban farm occupies the entire 9100 block of Goodwin Street between Owen and Westminster streets, grows 33 kinds of fruits and vegetables and sells them at farmers' markets. The farm produces value-added products including herbal teas, eggs, spices, and jams, and in addition to selling produce at its Saturday market, it offers a "Harvest on Demand" option, allowing neighbors to pick up their orders at the Farm's Community House at their convenience.
If you have never walked the interior of the farm, the entry point is 9227 Goodwin Street, and the grounds are worth an unhurried lap. The picturesque landscape adorned with art installations and murals creates an inviting atmosphere that feels like an outdoor museum. The farm hosts various cultural events, like the Afrikan Funkestra musical gathering, enriching the neighborhood with engaging experiences. Bring a tote. Bring a neighbor. Do not treat it as a quick errand.
The alley project that runs off the farm is easy to miss if you are not looking for it. In March 2023, the city announced four new Arts Alley locations in North End, Detroit. Specifically, the North End Alley will be the first Agri-Arts alley as part of a federal grant to transform dilapidated alleys into artistic oases. Anchored by the Oakland Avenue Urban Farm in partnership with artists from the Oakland Avenue Artists Coalition, this green alley will complement the Oakland Avenue Farmer's Market. On a bright morning, it is the best five-minute detour on the corridor.
The corner about to change
For years, the block that ends the farm at Westminster has been the seam that never quite closed. The plan that Northend Christian CDC and executive director Jerry Ann Hebron unveiled in April is what fills it.
"We can be resilient through food, through emergency preparation, through engagement with each other." — Jerry Ann Hebron, executive director, Oakland Avenue Urban Farm
Oakland Avenue Urban Farm is embarking on an ambitious plan to redevelop a 9,000-square-foot vacant grocery store at the corner of Oakland Avenue and Westminster Street. They want to turn the building into a community resilience center that will offer commercial kitchen space, community food storage, cooking classes, event space, housing and solar power. The scale and timeline are worth holding in mind before the block starts filling with construction fencing.
| What that corner is now | What is planned by 2028 |
|---|---|
| Vacant 9,000 sq ft former grocery at Oakland & Westminster | Community resilience center with commercial kitchen, food storage, event space, housing, solar |
| Farm sells produce at Saturday market and via Harvest on Demand | Chef-led cooking classes turning farm produce into home meals |
| Farmers make teas, jams, and spices offsite | Shared kitchen for jams, teas, baked and canned goods |
| Corner reads as a gap in the corridor | Anchor between the farm on Goodwin and Woodward retail |
The dollars behind the plan are not small, and the timing is not distant. Hebron has told reporters the project could run roughly $8 to $10 million, with organizers hoping to start initial work this summer and have the facility fully operating by 2028. A guardrail worth knowing about is already in place. Organizers say they intend to link housing and workforce training to long term land stewardship through the Detroit Cultivator community land trust as a guardrail against displacement.
Where the harvest lands on a plate
The reason the resilience center matters for people who already live here is that the food ecosystem around it has finally caught up. The North End's dinner options have moved from "one or two places worth the drive" to a genuine short list.
Freya, tucked on the east side of Woodward, is the one you probably already brag about. It was named best restaurant in Detroit, and one of America's best restaurants by the New York Times. The 2026 recognition is fresh: James Beard Foundation's "Ones to Watch" 2026, Restaurant of the Year Hour Detroit 2024, and Best Restaurant in Detroit from Metro Times 2022. For a summer Friday, its prix fixe format works because you know the timing going in.
Baobab Fare sits just south in New Center and remains the neighborhood's most reliable walk-up meal. The next project from its owners, Waka, is worth tracking too. Chefs and restaurateurs Hamisi Mamba and Nadia Nijimbere, the owners of Baobab Fare in Detroit's New Center, continue to work on the brick-and-mortar version of their food trailer Waka. It will seat 30 with fast-casual counter service and prepared meals for carryout. The menu is expected to have charcoal-grilled skewered meat, plus stewed meats and vegetables served with flaky flatbread.
The bigger piece, still coming, is the corner of Woodward and Euclid. One of the North End's highly anticipated developments is the Detroit Food Commons, a 30,000-square-foot complex that will include a café, community meeting space, incubator kitchen, offices for DBCFSN, and the Black-owned cooperative grocery store Detroit People's Food Co-op, at the southeast corner of Woodward Avenue and Euclid Street. Between the Food Commons on Woodward, Freya a few blocks off it, and the resilience center on Oakland, the North End is about to have three separate rooms doing what most neighborhoods try to make one grocery store do.
The evening version of the same walk
There is a version of the corridor that only opens after 6 p.m., and it is worth knowing if your Saturdays currently end when the market closes.
- Kiesling on the east edge of the neighborhood is the cocktail room to bring visitors to. It made the shortlist for Best Cocktail Bar in the region, alongside Ladder 4 and Evening Bar, in Hour Detroit's list of finalists that included Kiesling, Ladder 4 Wine Bar, NOMI, Wright & Co., and ZuZu.
- North End Taproom is the reliable neighborhood beer stop, one of Hour Detroit's finalists for best local brewhouse alongside Grand Trunk Pub and The Brakeman.
- Freya is the tasting-menu night. Book the earlier seating in summer so you can walk home in the long light.
- Oakland Avenue Urban Farm evenings — if you have not yet timed a visit to an Afrikan Funkestra gathering, that is the assignment for July.
You can, on the right Saturday, do the whole loop on foot: farm market by 11, alley murals by noon, coffee and a nap at home, Kiesling for a first drink, dinner at Freya, and a walk back through streets that stay cool under the maples.
Why this corridor works as one thing, not four
Every neighborhood in Detroit has a version of "our restaurant" and "our farm" and "our arts thing." The North End is unusual because those pieces sit inside about ten walkable blocks and were not planned that way by a developer. They were planned that way by the people who already lived here.
Hebron's vision for Oakland Avenue is inspired by her childhood in the area. Oakland Avenue was a bustling commercial corridor in the 1950s and '60s. Now, people have to leave the neighborhood to shop and run errands. She wants to see more businesses and resources return to the community. That is not marketing language. It is the through-line that connects the Saturday market, the Agri-Arts alley, the Food Commons on Woodward, and the resilience center at Westminster. The reason your walk to the farm passes so many small signs of intention is that the intention is a single one, held by the same set of neighbors, for a long time.
The operational scale behind that intention is also larger than most residents realize. Oakland Avenue Urban Farm executive director Jerry Hebron serves as coordinator for MI State Fair Agriculture Scholarship Program, and has helped to connect 100+ local youth to more than $200,000 in academic scholarships. Through a partnership with Project Play, the Farm also recently distributed 1600 free sports-equipment kits for area youth. The farm you know as the Saturday market is also a scholarship engine and a youth sports pipeline running out of the same six acres.
A short summer plan for people who already live here
If you have one Saturday to reset your sense of the corridor before the construction fencing goes up at Westminster, this is the order I would run it:
- Start at the farm at 9227 Goodwin around 10 a.m. for the market. Buy tea, eggs, and one thing you have never cooked.
- Walk the Agri-Arts alley slowly. Photograph two murals you want to remember.
- Detour west to Oakland and Westminster and look hard at the vacant grocery. In two years the block will not look like this.
- Coffee break at home or on Woodward.
- Dinner at Freya if you booked ahead, or a walk to Baobab Fare if you did not.
- Nightcap at Kiesling, or a beer at North End Taproom if the patio is open.
That is your neighborhood, this summer, on one street.
If you own a home along this corridor and are curious what the resilience center, the Food Commons, and the wider Oakland Avenue plan mean for your block over the next few years, Liz in Detroit is happy to talk it through over coffee. Let's connect.
