Restaurant, Women's Boutique Coming to Village

Several changes are happening in the Village and preparations for two new businesses are underway: a French restaurant and a speciality women's boutique.

The restaurant, named Marais, will be located at Kercheval Avenue and St. Clair Street, said property manager James Bellanca Jr., who oversees the management for 18 properties in the Village.

Marais will occupy the corner store most recently occupied by the Grosse Pointe Art Center as well as the neighboring space, which was the longtime location of Bellissima Boutique. The combination of the two areas will make the restaurant 6,100-square-feet, Bellanca said.

It will be a high-end restaurant with white table linens, Bellanca said. Well known chef David Gilbert is behind the restaurant. He most recently had been the executive chef at Forest Grill in Birmingham.

Meanwhile, a women's clothing boutique will be opening in the back-half of a storefront between the City Kitchen and Kramer's Bed Bath and Window Fashions. The front portion of the store will be used for City Kitchen's expansion of the bar area.

The boutique will be named SHE and it is a second location. The original store is in West Bloomfield, Bellanca said. It is anticipated that the store will open in May.

In addition to both of these projects, a third lease is being finalized now with a family hardware store from Eastpointe for the corner space of the former Village ACE, which moved to Mack Avenue.

ACE took up two storefronts technically and the new hardware store would only be using one store, Bellanca said. Once the lease for this space is signed, the trust for which manages the 18 properties will only have one vacancy in the Village, he said, explaining it is the storefront sandwiched between what is expected to be a hardware store and the former Borders building.

Bellanca anticipates even that will be occupied by the summer.