Arbor Update

Ann Arbor Area Community News

Upland Green (finally) sees a grand opening

19. September 2008 • Murph
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A tenant of Upland Green, at Plymouth and Murfin, requested we post on their grand opening next week. While this site is typically disinclined to post outright advertisements, particularly for national chains, the project itself has been the topic of enough past discussion that I believe any opening will be of interest to AU readers.

In small part, the interest is from the long mid-construction stall that the project went into. More interesting to me, having served a 6-year term as North Campus resident/student/employee, is that the project is the most “urban” site plan on Plymouth Road, a notoriously car-centric corridor. While parking ratios are still high, the front building is three stories, mixed-use, with parking in the rear.

But most notable is how the process played out. The development initially proposed single-story stand-alone restaurants, with parking in the front yard; the revised project was a result of the Planning Commission asking for more density, and lower setbacks, making everyone who weighed in happier. (Notably, David Cahill and I both thought it was a good development.) Hopefully it will live up to the hype and be a positive contribution to that stretch of Plymouth Road. I’ll post the advertisement with the hopes that somebody will check out the site and report back:

Panera Bread will open on Friday, Sept. 26 at 6 a.m. The new bakery-cafe will be located at 1773 Plymouth Road (across from North Campus). To commemorate the opening, customers who bring a non-perishable item to donate to Food Gatherers of Washtenaw County between 6 a.m. and 10 a.m., Sept. 26 through Oct. 3, will receive a free small coffee and a post-consumer recycled tote, while supplies last.



  1. Okay, Mike, here’s a critique from Friday evening’s pre-opening Food Gatherers benefit: the traffic sucked from start to finish. Heading north on Plymouth in the left-turn lane at Upland, waited three cycles of the signal for a left-green and finally bailed, using the pedestrian crossing against the light. Before that I’d waited 5 cycles of the signal heading east on Washington trying to turn left onto Division until the one vehicle per cycle that was squeezing through meant it was my turn. The AATA bus behind me was, I’m sure, racking up some crappy-ass stats for on-time performance.

    The wireless access at Panera was good.

    One of the bike hoops on site had already been dinged out of alignment — looked like a vehicle had bashed it.

    I had a bowl of broccoli-cheese soup with a giant hunk of bread, a giant bear-claw, sample of a coffee milkshake sort of deal, sample of a strawberry smoothie, another giant bear-claw, a large strawberry smoothie (because, yes, the sample tasted so good) and a couple bites of somebody else’s sandwich. It was all real tasty.


       —HD    Sep. 28 '08 - 06:02PM    #
  2. Panera = Glorified McDonald’s. Yes, it is tasty.


       —Ryan Munson    Sep. 30 '08 - 03:52AM    #
  3. annarbor.com in today’s issue just covered the new surge in activity at Upland Green due to new financing.


       —Mark Koroi    Nov. 5 '09 - 10:13PM    #
  4. HD – the only reason you can eat so many bearclaws and stay skinney is that bike riding you do! :-)


       —Leah Gunn    Nov. 5 '09 - 11:01PM    #