Three Closings and a Question: What Fills Ypsilanti's Gaps?
Wurst Bar, Beezy's, and Bobcat Bonnie's are gone. Here's what's coming next.
Between October 2024 and September 2025, Ypsilanti lost three restaurants in three different neighborhoods. Each closure had its own story. But taken together, they outline something worth paying attention to: a city in the middle of deciding what kind of dining scene it wants to be.
The replacements, where they exist, tell you more than the closings did.
705 West Cross Street
Wurst Bar closed in August 2025. For years it was one of the defining spots on Cross Street: gourmet sausages, mustard flights, 20-plus craft beer taps, and a vibe that split the difference between dive bar and serious kitchen. Dan Klenotic cooked there before opening Bellflower. The space had weight.
New owner Vincent Ankawi bought 705 West Cross and announced a bar food concept. Construction was underway by September 2025. Details beyond that have been sparse, but the fact that someone moved quickly on the space says something. Cross Street isn't a gamble anymore. Basil Babe, the Thai restaurant at 701 West Cross, opened in 2023 just two doors down and found steady footing. The corridor has foot traffic now. It has neighbors.
What I'll be watching is whether the new concept leans into what made Wurst Bar work (specific food, good beer, a reason to stay past one drink) or defaults to something safer. Cross Street rewards personality. Generic bar food won't hold that corner.
20 North Washington Street
Beezy's closed around September 2025. Scratch-baked breakfast, good bread, the kind of morning spot that anchors a block. Downtown Ypsilanti felt a little quieter after it went dark.
There is no public information about a new tenant as of March 2026. Six months of silence on a small downtown storefront isn't unusual, but it is noticeable. Washington Street doesn't have the foot traffic of Depot Town or the buzz of Cross Street. It needs an anchor, and right now it doesn't have one.
I don't want to speculate about what should go there. But the gap matters. A morning cafe does something for a block that a dinner-only restaurant can't. It gives people a reason to be on that street at 8 a.m. Whoever fills this space will determine whether Washington Street stays in the conversation or fades out of it.
200 West Michigan Avenue
Bobcat Bonnie's Ypsilanti closed in October 2024, and the circumstances were not quiet. Staff reported bounced paychecks. Over 90 percent of employees signed a petition. A unionization effort called Bobcats United formed. Owner Matt Buskard's Detroit-based chain lost its Ypsilanti location mid-shift, with workers picketing the Ferndale flagship afterward. It was a messy, public end to a restaurant that had occupied a prominent Michigan Avenue address.
The replacement is Bella Vita Bistro. Owners Kevin Cox, Brian Cox, and Darrel Savos have announced an Italian and French concept on the main floor, with a speakeasy jazz club in the basement. Laith Al-Saadi, the Ann Arbor musician and Voice contestant, is booked as an early performer. The project was announced in January 2025 with a target of summer 2025 for opening.
On paper, it's ambitious. A multi-level restaurant with live music in a space that just saw a chaotic closure requires serious capital and patience. But the ambition is exactly what Michigan Avenue needs. This stretch has always had potential and empty storefronts in roughly equal measure. A destination concept, if it sticks, could shift the math for the whole block.
The Pattern
All three closings were different. Wurst Bar ran its course. Beezy's went quiet. Bobcat Bonnie's imploded. But the replacements share a thread: where new operators have stepped in, they're local. Ankawi bought the Cross Street space himself. The Bella Vita team is building something specific to the location, not stamping a franchise onto a vacant address. Nobody is importing a chain to fill these gaps.
That's the Ypsilanti pattern, and it holds. Depot Town runs on locally owned restaurants. Sidetrack, 734 Brewing, MAIZ, Aubree's. Cross Street is the same. The city attracts independent operators because the economics still allow it, because the community shows up for places that feel like they belong there.
The risk is that "locally owned" becomes a stand-in for "undercapitalized." Independent restaurants fail at a high rate everywhere. Ypsilanti's affordable rents buy time, but they don't buy immunity. The real question is whether these new concepts can build the kind of regular customer base that sustains a restaurant past its first year.
What Comes Next
Three empty storefronts in a city this size register. People notice when the lights go off at a place they used to eat breakfast or grab a beer. The absence changes walking patterns, shifts habits, reshapes how a block feels at certain hours.
But Ypsilanti has been here before and come out the other side. The dining scene is deeper now than it was five years ago. Bellflower put the city on the map. Depot Town has real density. Cross Street is building an identity. The pieces exist.
The open question is 20 North Washington. A building with no announced tenant and no public timeline is just a dark window on a downtown street. Someone will fill it eventually. What it becomes will say as much about Ypsilanti's trajectory as the splashier projects on Cross Street and Michigan Avenue. Sometimes the smallest space on the quietest block is the one that matters most.