Middleburg Heights Historical Society Desperate For New Home, May Shut Down

MIDDLEBURG HEIGHTS, OH - Come July 1, the Middleburg Heights Historical Society will either have a new home or will be preparing to go into hibernation. The group was recently told by the Berea School District that it would need to vacate its offices at the former Middlebrook Educational Center, leaving the Historical Society without a home.

The eviction notice wasn't unexpected. When residents passed the district's bond levy in November 2016 they were signing off on a new use for the Middlebrook building, namely a new home for the district's fifth-grade students. The trade-off is the loss of a home for the Historical Society.

Rose Conley, the Historical Society's director, says the surprise was how quickly the group was asked to leave the building. She originally thought the Middlebrook building would be repurposed in 2020, giving her group a few years to get things in order. But the goal for getting the building ready for students was moved up to 2018 and then 2017, she says. Now her group has till July 1 to find a new building.

Berea City Schools' Assistant Superintendent Jeff Grosse told Patch he spoke with Conley on Tuesday. He said the district doesn't have any vacancies in Middleburg Heights that would suit the Historical Society.

"The only building we have partial vacant space in is in Berea. It would be too difficult to house the Historical Society in an active school building," Gross told Patch.

The goal for Conley's group now is to find a non-school building. She said that while the school district's generosity was much-appreciated, residents didn't seem to know the Middleburg Heights Historical Society existed. She said there were very few visitors at the Middlebrook location.

"They have to drive around to the side of the building and find the door," Conley told Patch. "It doesn’t encourage people to come and find us. We don’t have a place that looks like a museum or historical society building. We’ve even talked about just finding a place to do storage and put the historical society on hold here. We can’t afford to do big time rent."

Before the group takes the nuclear option of placing its artifacts in a storage facility, Conley is aggressively looking for another home.

"We’re only open one day a week," Conley told Patch. "We’re working hard to obtain the little red school house on Sheldon Road but it would be some years before we could use it as a building. It has a lot of work to be done in it."

Conley added that the red school house may be beyond salvage, but she's unsure.

The group's other lead came from a landlord on Pearl Road, Conley says. He originally thought they may work in a vacant property on the road, but Conley has been unable to get a hold of the man since their original conversation.

"We’d like to have a building where people could see it and people can come into it," Conley told Patch. "When you’re inside a school, people don't always know you exist."

Whatever space the Historical Society ends up in, they'll need space. The group's current home at Middlebrook offers about 900 square feet, Conley says.

"We don’t have a lot of artifacts, but we do have artifacts. We have things from Midpark High School when it closed. We have a large plow from one of the farms, we have a couple of real heavy, fireproof cabinets. It’ll be a job to move," she says.

Conley asks that if you know of a space that may be suitable for the Historical Society, contact her at mhhistoricalsociety@yahoo.com.

Photo from Google Earth