There’s a storefront on North Main Street with Ohio State Marion’s name on it — and a seat at the table with yours. The Downtown Engagement Hub isn’t another office or classroom. It’s where the people who live and work in Marion and the people who teach and study at Ohio State sit down together and build something.
No. The Hub is not a satellite office, extra classroom space, or a lecture hall where somebody stands behind a podium, settled in advance on who’s talking and who’s listening. It’s a place where the people who live and work in this community and the people who teach and study at this university sit at the same table, share what we know, and see what we can build together.
Codesign starts from a simple premise: the people closest to a problem should help shape the response to it. That sounds obvious. It’s not how most things get done. The usual method is that experts study a community, produce a plan, and present it. Codesign inverts the sequence — residents, students, employers, nonprofit leaders, officials, and faculty come into the room as co-creators. We surface what people know from living it, make invisible systems visible, prototype, test, get it wrong, and revise. It’s not a suggestion box, and it’s not a public meeting announcing a decision already made. It’s slower, more honest, and — when it’s working — genuinely joyful.
Lois Fisher. For more than thirty years, Lois J. Fisher & Associates has done the patient, unglamorous, consequential work of putting buildings Marion had written off back into use across downtown and the Medical District. She’s given Ohio State Marion this building for three years — deliberate, on both sides. We’re not going to tell Marion we’ve built something permanent before we’ve earned it. Three years is enough time to find out what this place should be and to prove it belongs here. If we get it right, we intend to stay.
Rebekah Matheny, Associate Professor of Interior Design in Ohio State’s Department of Design — the same designer behind the Keenan Center in Columbus. She works in the sensory register: materials, light, texture, the way a space tells you how to feel before you’ve consciously decided anything. The result is flexible (a workshop Tuesday, a gallery Thursday), comfortable (people don’t think well in bad chairs), legible from the sidewalk, and unmistakably a working space — somewhere things get made, moved, marked up, and figured out.
No — Marion already has a lot, and we’re not here to repeat it. For example: The Forge teaches you how to start a business, a block away at Marion Tech Downtown. Connect Coworx is Marion’s coworking space. The Marion Area Chamber of Commerce convenes the business community. Aerophlix Studios supports local creatives. The Marion CommUNITY Collaborative (from Aspire Ministries) coalesces local service agencies. Black Organizations of Marion brings key advocacy groups together. Instead, Ohio State Marion’s Downtown Engagement Hub works at the systems level — the conditions Marionites share and the challenges no single organization can solve alone. Said differently: we’re here to get the right people in one room and see what they make together.
Join the mailing list to follow programming — but also, come to us with a need, a project, an idea, or an experiment that wants a room and some company. The calendar is built substantially from what the community proposes.
You might bring us: a challenge your organization is stuck on · a project you want to test with real people · a partnership idea with campus faculty or students · an event that just makes downtown a better place to be on a Saturday.
You do not need: a connection to Ohio State · a polished proposal · a budget · a degree.
Ways in: Propose something — rough is fine. Or just visit during open hours.
Yes — it’s not a facility that happens to belong to the campus; it’s where the campus does its work in public.
Faculty: hold community office hours downtown, bring a class for a session or critique, propose or place a community-engaged research project. If your scholarship would be better with someone from Marion in the room, this is the room.
Staff: bring a program downtown, meet a partner here, use the space for work that’s easier when people can walk in off the street.
Students: join a project team, pitch an event, present what you’ve made to an audience that isn’t your professor.
How to start: Contact Leslie Beyer-Hermsen.1 or use our event request form
We take this as seriously as we take parking, and for the same reason: what keeps people away usually isn’t a lack of interest — it’s not knowing whether they’ll be able to get in.
We’re new to this block. Our immediate neighbors—Leapin’ Outreach, The CruX, Taco Central, Safe Harbor, Fable, Fahey Bank, Marion Tech Downtown, and a lot of others—were making downtown Marion a community long before we unlocked this door. We’ve arrived excited to share space with them, and ready to listen. If you’ve been living or working downtown and have thoughts about what we should be doing — or should stop doing — come tell us.
146 N. Main Street, Marion, Ohio 43302. Wednesday–Friday, 10 a.m.–5 p.m. (events often fall outside these hours — watch the calendar). Leslie Beyer-Hermsen, Assistant Dean — beyer-hermsen.1@osu.edu · Jennifer Schlueter, Dean and Director — schlueter.10@osu.edu.