What does a long-running ice cream shop do when the sandwich place next door closes and the rent still comes due? If you're Scott Moloney, you don't replace one tenant with another. You turn the whole building into six.
That's the short version of what happened at 22965 Woodward Avenue over the winter, when Treat Dreams became The Pavilion Street Market. It's a food hall now, Ferndale's first, and on paper it reads like just another opening in a city that gets a new one every few months. Its opening year overlaps with the DIY Street Fair, an established annual event on Woodward.
From Treat Dreams to The Pavilion
Moloney has run Treat Dreams on that stretch of Woodward since August 2010, longer than most of the restaurants around him have existed at all. When the sandwich business that shared his space closed last year, he didn't backfill it quietly. He rebuilt the model. The 4,000-square-foot building now holds Treat Dreams alongside five other food and drink concepts, and Moloney has said plainly that he's treating it as an experiment with a shelf life: Treat Dreams had one year left on its lease when the food hall was announced, and he said he'd know within months whether the concept works well enough for the group to renew together.
In The Detroit News, Moloney described the space in three parts:
"It will be one part street market, one part pop-up space with a 40-person pop-up space in the rear of the store, and then it will be one part restaurant incubator, that's where the rotating stall comes in."
The idea took shape after Emily Infinity, a musician who's spent close to two decades in hospitality, pitched him on a kava stand she'd been dreaming about. That conversation led to Cosmic Roots, and the rest of the lineup took shape afterward. The Pavilion opened in mid-January 2026, and here's what's actually behind the counter:
| Stall | What They Serve | Who's Running It |
|---|---|---|
| Treat Dreams | Ice cream, the original tenant | Scott Moloney |
| Zaddy's | Soul food burritos, travel-inspired plates | Chef Josie Clemens, a Hell's Kitchen and Food Network alum |
| The Dump Truck | Handmade dumplings, Asian fare | Chef Jared Bobkin, also a Hell's Kitchen alum |
| Papelon Market Cafe | Venezuelan arepas | A St. Clair Shores food truck with an existing Ferndale following from pop-ups at Urbanrest |
| Cosmic Roots | Kava, botanicals, coffee, no alcohol | Emily Infinity and herbalist Isabel Cali |
| Rotating sixth stall | Tacos, loosely defined | Changes on a schedule |
The Pavilion brings six food and drink concepts together under one roof. The DIY Street Fair adds artists, bands, and local food vendors to the same weekend, giving visitors two nearby parts of Ferndale's food and arts scene to explore.
The Fair That's Older Than the Ice Cream Shop
Here's the detail that changes how you should read all of this: the DIY Street Fair has been happening on this same stretch of Woodward since 2008, two years before Treat Dreams even opened. This year marks its 19th run, and it returns September 25 through 27, 2026, on the east side of Woodward Avenue between 9 Mile Road and Troy Street, just blocks from the Pavilion's door.
It's free, it's juried, and it's grown into one of the larger independent art festivals in the region: more than 150 artists and makers, a full weekend of live bands on a main stage, and a food lineup built around local trucks and vendors rather than chains. Friday runs 6 to 11 p.m., Saturday 11 a.m. to 11 p.m., Sunday noon to 9 p.m. Attendance figures cited by festival organizers put the weekend crowd at roughly 75,000 people across the three days.
So the fair isn't new, and it isn't the newcomer here. It's the established institution on this block, the thing Ferndale residents have built into their September for almost two decades. The Pavilion is the one that just showed up.
The Pavilion and the DIY Street Fair
Moloney built a 40-person pop-up space into the back of the Pavilion as one leg of his three-part concept. The DIY Street Fair brings artists, makers, live music, and food vendors to Woodward over the weekend. The Pavilion's six stalls offer another nearby place to find food and drink.
If you're heading down for the fair, the practical version is simple: Woodward between 9 Mile and Troy gets busy fast on Friday evening and stays that way through Saturday night, so plan to walk in from a side street rather than fight for parking directly on the strip. The Pavilion's six stalls give you an easy stop before or after the fairgrounds if you want something besides fair food, and Treat Dreams is still slinging the same ice cream it has since August 2010 if that's what you're actually there for.
What's genuinely new this year isn't the fair. It's The Pavilion, which didn't exist last September. That's worth knowing before you walk down there, whether you're going for the art, the bands, or just something to eat.
For more on how daily life moves along downtown Ferndale outside of festival season, see our earlier guide to walkable weekends in the neighborhood.
Ferndale keeps changing shape in small, specific ways like this, one lease and one festival weekend at a time, and that kind of texture is exactly what Abby Kushner tracks block by block for clients who want to understand a neighborhood before they make any decisions about it. If you're curious what else has shifted in this corridor recently, or want a local's read on how a stretch like this one holds its value over time, reach out anytime.
