The Hartford Business Journal has posted two articles about Middletown

Middletown one of three Hartford area museums sharing $402K in grants.

A federal agency said it has awarded $402,400 to cultural institutions in Hartford and Middletown to help them improve their visitor experience, hire staff and preserve collections.

The competitive grants from the Institute of Museum and Library Services, which will be matched with more than $546,000 from the museums themselves, will go to:

• Harriett Beecher Stowe Center, Hartford, $150,000: Staff at the center, named after the author of famed anti-slavery novel ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin,’ will design a new, audience experience in its main exhibit, the Stowe House, to replace its traditional guided tour.

• Amistad Center for Art & Culture, Hartford, $141,200: The center, located at the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, will hire an education associate to design and manage visitor and educational programming based on African culture and art. The center will also use a consultant to evaluate its audience and programs.

• Davidson Art Center, Middletown, $111,173: The Wesleyan University center will digitally photograph as many as 5,000 photos and prints in its collection for eventual public viewing online. The images represent European and American artists from as far back as the 15th century.

Other Connecticut museums that received money from the IMLS’ $25.6 million grant round include:

• Mystic Seaport Museum, Mystic, $182,671: Mystic will develop multimedia pieces for an upcoming exhibit on whaling.

• Peabody Museum of Natural History, New Haven, $136,615: Peabody will buy collections-storage cabinets for parts of its invertebrate zoology collection.

• Lyman Allyn Art Museum, New London, $82,914: The museum will inventory and re-catalog its collection of approximately $10,000 art objects.

Surging Middletown has Middlesex County in tow

Middletown‘s Main Street is a picturesque scene befitting a Norman Rockwell painting.

Church steeples bookend the mile-long, asphalt ribbon, hugged on both sides from the foot of the Arrigoni Bridge south, to Union Street, by century-old storefronts, with offices and apartments overhead, and vehicles parked nose first. By day, Main Street hums with workers, shoppers and lunchgoers; at night, it transforms into an after-school and -work playground for adults from throughout the region.

But the picture-postcard setting of this city of 47,500 along the Connecticut River — once the state’s biggest urban center and the de facto seat of 170,000-person Middlesex County — belies the economic resurgence the region has experienced in recent years. Middletown’s downtown office, retail and market-rate living spaces are running out, prompting talk of fresh development there and along the riverfront.

“Clearly, Middletown has been going through a rebirth the last decade or so,’’ said Guilford resident John Meerts, who is vice president for finance and administration at Wesleyan University, one of the city’s largest employers and economic contributors.

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