Black Friday fever is spreading downtown.

While independent Ann Arbor merchants fall short of opening at midnight or offering deep discounts to create a shopping frenzy, many downtown businesses are extending their hours or holding sales the day after Thanksgiving.

“It’s a little different for us as a downtown business. A lot of people look to the box stores or the mall for Black Friday,” said Rick Wedel, co-owner of 16-Hands gallery. “We see an uptick as the (holiday) Main Street lights are turned on Friday. But it’s not a bust your door down in the wee hours of the morning crowd.”

Black Friday is good not only for downtown shops, said Ingrid Ault, executive director of Think Local First. Many area restaurants also see increased traffic from shoppers looking for a meal.

Kerrytown Market and Shops, home to 23 tenants, will open early for this first time this Black Friday, said Kerrytown manager Karen Farmer.

Kerrytown’s V2V apparel and home shop has a history of holding a Black Friday sale with extended hours, but this year almost all of the stores are joining in the 8 a.m. opening time and many are offering deals.

“Our tenants have had a lot of people inquiring about early hours for Friday,” Farmer said. Farmer hopes it will join Kerrytown’s other two holiday kickoff days - the annual holiday open house held earlier in November and the first Friday in December Midnight Madness - as a three-prong approach to promote local holiday shopping.

Elephant Ears, the baby and children’s clothing and equipment store in Kerrytown, will have a storewide sale Friday, said owner Matt Cyrulnik.

“Black Friday usually equals mall,” he said. But many Ann Arbor shoppers shun the mall, and he’s hoping that buy-local attitude will begin a new tradition of making the day after Thanksgiving a boom day for local shopkeepers.

While past Black Fridays have seen a modest uptick in traffic, Cyrulnik said, it doesn’t compare to Midnight Madness.

While Midnight Madness has been the traditional holiday kickoff, more and more downtown businesses are developing strategies to capitalize on early bird shoppers, including putting out holiday merchandise before Thanksgiving, Ault said.

“They want to make sure they get their piece of the pie.”

A growing number also are trying to capture the post-Thanksgiving shopping rush, said Ault.

“A lot of my members are doing specials for the whole weekend after Thanksgiving.”

That helps debunk the myth that buying local costs more, Ault said. “I’ve seen things sold in catalogs that you can buy for a lot less locally. I saw (an Ypsilanti-based) Maggie’s (Functional) Organics scarf for $35 in a catalog sold locally for $12. I see that all of the time.”