Middle Ground

GAMBIER, Ohio (October 9, 2003) Gambier's newest business, a coffee shop located downtown, will open in October. The owners of the new café promise to bring a slice of cosmopolitan New York flavor to Gambier.

The café, named Middle Ground, will be run by the husband-and-wife team of Joel Gunderson and Margaret Lewis,along with Jason Adelman, the owner of The Feve coffee shop in Oberlin, Ohio.

Middle Ground will be open from 7:00 a.m. to 12:00 midnight, seven days a week.

One of the highlights of the new coffee shop 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 foursome: Joel, Sari, and their father and mother, Professor of Art Barry Gunderson, and his wife, Kay. 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."

Prior to moving to Gambier this summer, Gunderson was an assistant vice president at Christie's, the world's oldest fine-art auctioneer, where he managed the company's New York press office. Lewis is a certified nurse-midwife, and she was a partner at the Woman's Wellness Center in Nyack, New York, a home-birth and holistic-care practice. She was also an instructor with the nurse practitioner program at Columbia University and the regional coordinator for the Purple Dragon Organic Food Co-op.

One of the nation's leading liberal arts and sciences colleges and home to the Kenyon Review, Kenyon College offers 1,594 students a challenging educational experience enriched by a culture of friendship. Graduates of the College have included actor and philanthropist Paul Newman and Pulitzer-prize winning author E. L. Doctorow.