Middle Ground to open in September

Gambier's newest business, a coffee shop that will occupy the Kenyon-owned space formerly rented by the Red Door Café, will open in late September. The new café, named Middle Ground, will be run by the husband-and-wife team of Joel Gunderson and Margaret Lewis and Jason Adelman. The café will be open from 7:00 a.m. to 12:00 midnight, seven days a week.

The owners are refurbishing the interior of the establishment, incorporating the adjacent space known as the KC, which the College will still be able to use as a welcome center during such occasions as Commencement, Parents Weekend, and Reunion Weekend. Middle Ground was originally scheduled to open in August, but construction delays forced the owners to push back the opening date.

One of the highlights of the new interior will be a sweeping, thirty-foot-long aluminum and birch counter top. Designed by Savannah College of Art and Design graduates Sari Gunderson and Ryan Wither, the piece was built by Lewis, Wither, and the Gunderson trio: Joel, Sari, and their father, Professor of Art Barry Gunderson. Many of the other pieces of furniture for the café were designed and built by the same team.

While some menu items are still under discussion, Joel says that Middle Ground will serve bread and baked goods from the Broken Rocks Café and Bakery in Loudonville, Ohio. The lunch menu will include soups, salads, panini sandwiches, and wraps. The dinner menu will include gourmet burgers. "We have a great emphasis on using local suppliers and producers," says Joel. "The Mount Vernon farmer's market has been a great resource for us."

Gunderson and Lewis are graduates of Oberlin College, and Adelman is the owner of The Feve, a successful Oberlin, Ohio, coffee shop. Gunderson and Lewis moved to Gambier recently from Bergenfield, New Jersey, a suburb of New York.