“The antique store is just a bunch of fun for me and mom,” Salt City Antiques Co-Owner Steven Hudock said. The store, located at 115 W. Michigan Ave in Ypsilanti and is owned in part by Hudock and in part by his mother, Carol McEachran. What began as an auction house some 40 years ago has turned into a lifelong passion for both Steven and Carol.
“I was an auctioneer at the age of nine,” Hudock said. “After I graduated college, I started selling antiques in a place called Salt City Antiques in Saline, Michigan.”
Shortly after Hudock began working at the antique store, Carol began wondering about owning an antique store of her own. It was 1999 and she was looking into retiring with her husband, Ron McEachran.
“Ron was a carpenter and my mom was a designer. They built and sold houses. She did the wallpaper painting and the finishing,” Hudock recounts.
With backgrounds in auctioneering, carpentry and design, owning an antique store wasn’t too much of a stretch. As luck would have it, it just so happened that the original owners of Salt City Antiques were interested in selling.
“[Carol] opened a second location in Depot Town, and then we downsized to just Depot Town 15 years ago,” Hudock said.
The move to owning and operating Salt City Antiques has proven to be worthwhile. In 2022, the store was awarded Best Antique Store, Best Vintage Store, and Best Furniture Store by Current Magazine. Now in its 25th year of business, Salt City Antiques owes much of its success to the strengths of Steven, Carol, and Ron.
“Ron would do all the furniture repair and refinishing. He did that for the last 25 years,” Hudock said. “A lot of [those awards] are attributed to his abilities to refinish and repair furniture.”
Ron’s skills were one of the many things that continue to set Salt City Antiques apart from other antique stores. It allowed shoppers the ability to simply take the furniture home with them, without needing to find somewhere to restore items to a working condition. Unfortunately, Ron passed in November 2023 at the age of 83.
“We are just now selling his last pieces at the shop,” Hudock said.
Another thing that sets Salt City Antiques apart is the staging of the furniture, which is something that Hudock himself specializes in. It’s a constant process.
“I’m restaging as soon as things sell, so that can be from one day to the next. I’m restaging, in my mind, as soon as I go to a sale and I buy stuff. I’m picturing how I’m going to display it in the shop,“ he said. “My parents always told me that I should have been an interior designer.”
The staging, coupled with finding new pieces for the store, means long hours for Hudock. But it’s worth it for the engagement and the ambience that it brings to the shop.
“Last night, it was there ‘till midnight resetting a room with stuff that we bought from someone’s house and other things we’ve had. I made a whole new room last night, for today,” he said.
“If we just put furniture in there and didn’t do settings and vignettes of things, I could probably put a third more stuff in the shop. [But the staging] has been very beneficial because it just creates interest. It keeps customers returning to at least look or they can see what the furniture looks like in their home. It gives the customer a better vision of what’s possible.”
Check out the possibilities at Salt City Antiques’ Instagram page or at the store itself. They’re open every Thursday, Friday, and Saturday from 11am-5pm and every Sunday from 12-5pm.
