Walk the 28th Street pedestrian bridge near Division on a weekday morning and you'll pass someone heading the opposite direction toward the Bojangles that opened at 1730 28th Street this past February. The bridge and the restaurant announcements are two changes along this corridor. Together, they show how 28th Street is changing, even if each announcement looks like a separate event.
Wyoming residents have watched a version of this before. A restaurant closes. A different one opens in its place eighteen months later. You shrug and move on. The bridge opened first, followed by the business changes described here. That sequence is one way to read the street.
What Twenty Thousand Crossings Actually Show
The city opened the 28th Street pedestrian bridge in September 2025, connecting neighborhoods that had been split by six lanes of traffic for as long as most residents can remember. By late February, deputy city manager Nicole Hofert was telling Fox17 that the bridge had already logged 20,000 users. Five months, 20,000 crossings, on a stretch of road that previously required a car to get from one side to the other.
That number matters less as a headline than as a measure of pedestrian use. It shows how many people used the bridge, but it does not establish why a restaurant chooses a location or whether that figure changes a leasing decision. Hofert described the corridor as "the downtown where we're trying to make a connection," placing the bridge within the city's broader effort to connect the area.
The Address at 1730 28th Street
Before it was Bojangles, 1730 28th Street was a Taco John's. Before that, it was Main Street Pub. Three tenants, one address, and the third one happens to be Michigan's first location of a chain with more than 850 restaurants nationwide. Lead operator CJ Schermer told WOOD TV8 the traffic counts on 28th Street made the site an easy call, and the location is owned by Michigan-based Meritage Hospitality Group, the same operator behind Morning Belle, Blue Porch, and several area Wendy's locations. A regional operator with that much local real estate doesn't pick an address on a whim.
Bojangles isn't standing on the corridor alone. Raising Cane's opened at 3650 28th Street SE near Lake Eastbrook Boulevard in November 2025, and Popeyes had already staked out ground on the same stretch, alongside Rodriguez supermarket near the Division intersection. The corridor has three chicken-forward concepts and a full-service grocer. Together, they add new food options along 28th Street.
| Address | Previous Tenant | Current or Coming |
|---|---|---|
| 1730 28th St SW | Main Street Pub, then Taco John's | Bojangles (opened Feb. 3, 2026) |
| Former Applebee's, across 28th St from the original Frankie V's | Applebee's | Frankie V's Sicilian Pizza and Grill (targeting fall 2026) |
| 3650 28th St SE, near Lake Eastbrook Blvd | — | Raising Cane's (opened Nov. 18, 2025) |
Frankie V's Is Coming Back, But Smaller
If you were a regular at Frankie V's Sicilian Pizza and Grill before it closed in 2024, the news that owners Frank and Wanda Vitale are bringing it back should come with a caveat. According to reporting picked up by WGRD, the Vitales sold the original 28th Street building to developer Magnus Capital Partners as part of the larger Wyoming City Center redevelopment plan, and after more than two decades in business they were ready to step back. The comeback isn't a reopening of the old space. It's a renovation of the former Applebee's building directly across 28th Street, with seating for around 125 and a menu simplified to the pizza and pasta classics that made the original a regular stop for birthdays and post-game dinners. A catering operation runs alongside it.
The target is fall 2026, which puts the grand reopening somewhere in the next several months if the timeline holds. The Frankie V's story differs from the chicken chains: longtime local operators are returning in a smaller footprint on the same street, just a few hundred feet from where they started.
Six Hundred New Neighbors Are the Quiet Reason for All of This
None of the restaurant activity makes sense without the housing behind it. Home Flats is in its third construction phase along 28th Street, and Hofert told Fox17 that once phase three is complete, the development will have added more than 600 housing units to the corridor. That's the demand side of the equation that rarely gets mentioned in restaurant-opening coverage. A bridge gets people across the street. Six hundred new units gets them living close enough to walk there in the first place.
Wyoming resident Joyce, who moved to the area three years ago, told Fox17 that the growth shows up in smaller ways too, mostly in how much harder it's gotten to take a left turn during busier hours. That's the honest version of a growth story: more people, more competition for the same intersections, and a corridor that's still figuring out its own traffic patterns even as it adds capacity.
Fifty Years on the Same Block
Marg Wilson has owned Marge's Donut Den on 28th Street for five decades, all at the same address, which makes her one of the few people who can describe the corridor's last thirty years of change from a single vantage point. She credited the neighborhood's people as its real asset, telling Fox17 that Wyoming residents "have a lot of integrity" and that the variety of churches and parks nearby matters as much to her as any new development. Her shop isn't part of the redevelopment wave. It predates it by decades, and it's still there while chains rotate through addresses a few blocks away. That contrast is worth sitting with if you're trying to gauge how much of 28th Street's identity is actually changing versus how much is just adding new layers on top of what was already there.
There's also quieter, non-restaurant investment happening on the corridor. Moxie Real Estate and Development broke ground in July 2026 on a speculative industrial building on 28th Street aimed at small businesses, according to Crain's Grand Rapids Business. It's not a restaurant story, but it's the same underlying bet: that 28th Street has enough momentum to support new commercial square footage beyond what's already committed.
What This Means If You're Just Trying to Get Dinner Tonight
If you live near 28th Street, the practical takeaway isn't complicated. The corridor's new arrivals span 28th Street, from the pedestrian bridge and Home Flats area toward Lake Eastbrook Boulevard, rather than clustering within a few blocks. If you want a read on where the next opening lands, watch that stretch between Division and Lake Eastbrook Boulevard before you watch anywhere else. And if you've been holding out for Frankie V's to come back exactly as it was, adjust the expectation. Smaller room, same recipes, and a fall target that's worth checking on as the season moves along.
The rest of the established scene hasn't gone anywhere. Monelli's Italian Grill and Sports Bar, The Stray, One Twenty Three Tavern, and Wing Doozy are all still drawing regulars on the same corridor that's absorbing three new chains and a rebuilt local institution. Wyoming's food scene right now isn't a replacement story. It's an addition story, and the bridge is one part of the changes along 28th Street.
If you're watching this corridor because you're weighing a move in Wyoming yourself, rather than just curious about where to grab dinner, the team at Glover Agency tracks exactly this kind of block-by-block change across Metro Detroit and West Michigan. See your market value and talk through what a changing corridor means for your specific street.
