by John Beagle
Miami Middletown Downtown is scheduled to opens its doors later this month.
"We want Miami Middletown Downtown to be a place where our campus and community can connect in meaningful, educational ways—and have a fun time doing it," says Eric Melbye, director of the center.
Miami Middletown Downtown is an activity center for students, the university and the community to get together by providing space for a variety of workshops, lectures, seminars, meetings, cultural events and more.
In October 2006, an addition to downtown Middletown was Miami University Middletown's Applied Research Center, which now occupys 5,800 square feet in the former Bank One Building.
This is the same location where more than 200 years ago Stephen Vail, one of Middletown's founders, chose to build his cabin, and over the years that site became the center of downtown Middletown. It was the location of a general store and mercantile operated by William Oglesby and George Barnitz, which in time became Barnitz Bank, and finally Bank One. Perry Thatcher purchased the Bank One building in 2002.
The Center, a public policy research group that began at MUM in the early 1980s, provides research services to a wide variety of local, county, and state government entities, non-profit organizations, and business and industry.
Directed by Dr. Robert Seufert of Miami's Sociology Department, the Center employs 15 people on a regular basis, and when engaged in statewide surveying work for such clients as the Ohio Department of Transportation or Ohio Department of Public Safety, that number swells to 40 to 50 people.
