The Muncie City Council recently approved a $4.5 million loan for the downtown makers hub Madjax. The loan has caused some tension with community members, though tenants of the roughly 80,000-square-foot building remain optimistic.
The History
Madjax, which originally opened in 2015, was intended to be a center for innovation and design, bringing together makers of all kinds.
In January 2016, the makerspace received a $1 million line of credit from the Muncie City Council, which the Madjax director of operations Jennifer Greene said was used to bring the building up to code by adding ADA compliant elevators, stairwells and bathrooms.
The space saw its first two tenants, The Tribune Showprint and The Guardian Brewing Company, move in June 2016.
In August of this year, the Muncie City Council was asked to approve a $4.5 million loan, even as it was announced that the hub carried nearly $1.8 million in debt.
The loan, which would have to see three different funding failures before triggering property tax payback, was approved in early September.
Shortly after, Ball State Board of Trustees member Thomas Bracken announced he was suing the city of Muncie and other municipal agencies over the funding of the Madjax project, filing for an injunction to stop the city going forward with any additional funding.
Neither Greene nor Todd Donati, director of the Muncie Redevelopment Commission, would comment on the lawsuit, though Greene said everyone in the Madjax community is remaining positive in the work that they do.
“We want [Madjax] to have a direct impact on our downtown and our city as a whole, but also on our workforce development because what we’re focused on is being able to recreate a new workforce culture in Muncie,” Greene said. “We want people to choose to stay here, to be enticed, to graduate from our university and maybe start laying their roots here because they find that there is a culture and an environment that’s conducive to being innovative and forward thinking.”
The Tenants
Since opening, Madjax has seen tenants from both the Muncie and Ball State communities move in.
Two Town Theater Group
Two Town Theater Group, established in July, is a traveling theater collective that performs plays in Muncie and New Castle. Two Town uses the space to not only rehearse and build structures for the plays, but will also perform for the first time within Madjax.
“The fact that we’re taking a building that was supposed to be torn down because it was not useful anymore and now that it’s renovated, we can turn it into a theater,” said junior theatrical studies major Jacob Bradley. “Like, this place washed clothes and now we’re using it to perform art.”
PhyxtGears
Founded in 2005, PhyxtGears is the robotics teams of the Muncie and Delaware County areas.
The team teaches both high school and middle school students robotics, programming, electronics design, video production, documentation and media management.
Mike Koch, vice president of PhyxtGears, said the team has moved quite a bit since its inception 12 years ago. Since moving to Madjax a little over a year ago, Koch said their space has doubled to 5,800 square feet.
“We finally got together and we kind of designed this space and they built it just like what we wanted. So we have over twice the space now,” Koch said.
The Guardian Brewing Company
One of the original two tenants, The Guardian is gearing up for their grand reopening on Sept. 30. Through the Madjax space, the company has been able to increase their production rate.
“I’m excited for the fact that I’ve kind of gotten into the ground floor, help them design the brewery. The chance to work on a brand-new system, I mean that’s exciting for me,” said Sean Fickle, the head brewer. “We’re excited to be in Madjax just the whole maker concept. Plus we’re closer to downtown compared to our old location … I’m excited to see what else kind of follows us in here.”
The CO:LAB
The CO:LAB, a co-working space for startups, developers, designers, writers and anyone else looking for a space to work, opened its first location downtown in 2014, and later joined forces with Madjax in the fall of 2016.
Since its inception in 2014, Greene said the CO:LAB has brought 32 workers or business owners downtown.
“Most people come to the CO:LAB because they are looking for space and want to get out of the Starbucks or the coffee shops or off their living room couch and out of their pajamas so that they’re actually conducting and doing business and networking,” Greene said. “If you were to ask almost all of our members why they’ve stayed it would be the sense of community.”
College of Architecture and Planning
Ball State hosts an architecture immersive learning course within the walls of Madjax. Pam Harwood, the professor of the class, said it allows students a bigger place to work and an outlet to get more involved with the Muncie community.
“We purchased the space out at Madjax because we were just plum out of space at CAP,” Harwood said. “All of our projects involve creative use of materials and equipment that is both digital and analog — creativity, innovation, intrapreneurial activities that bring [students] together and create a community that makes people want to be a part of this space, this makers hub.”
The students are currently building pavilions and a community garden at the Maring-Hunt Library. They built full-scale prototypes and the actual pavilion within their space at Madjax.
“We have not only used the space with all of the tools and all of the materials and just the space itself for things we have also used it for gallery opening,” said senior architecture major Emma Ocken said. “We did our final presentations in the space where we could set up our installations and we could go and present our projects to as many people as we could. So having a big open space like that with movable materials and stands and everything is very helpful to the CAP environment.”
Book Arts Collaborative
The collaborative makes handmade products and provides lessons for letterpress and bookbinding.
Rai Peterson, a Ball State professor, teaches an immersive learning class where students learn letterpress and hand book sewing and binding skills. The class publishes a book annually.
“Our immersive project uses Madjax because it provides enough room with sufficient structural support to hold the tons of iron presses we use,” Peterson said in an email. “We are connected to our community partner, Tribune Showprint Posters, Inc., who loan us tools and expertise every day. The Madjax setup is ideal for Book Arts Collaborative, and we are the only book arts program in the nation that is connected to a working press.”
Tribune Showprint
Tribune Showprint was the first tenant to move into Madjax. The showprint is the nation’s oldest, continuously running letterpress shop.
One of the owners, Kim Miller, said the best things about Madjax is that it fit all of their company’s needs and the collaboration atmosphere.
“It’s been a lot of fun watching the space expand and grow,” Miller said. “Being here for a couple months by ourselves and each add-on brings a whole new group of people that are just willing to work and help you. It’s been a lot of fun to just meet everybody and become kind of like a family.”
In addition to these long term tenants, there are various artists who rent small spaces in Madjax to show off their form of art.
The Future
Greene said Madjax is currently looking to expand the usable space within the building and is always looking for more tenants who are within the maker realm to take up residency within the space.
In addition to those tenants, Greene says she hopes to implement a makers lab open for the public, where there would be equipment for anyone to come and use.
“You buy a membership at the Y so you have access to their equipment and classes,” Greene said. “Here you’ll buy a membership to Madjax, you’ll have access to our equipment and classes — it’s just making equipment instead of exercise equipment.”
Another program Greene hopes to implement, is one that would train, or retrain Muncie residents for industrial jobs. She says Madjax hopes to work with Purdue to create curriculum directly for Muncie’s local manufacturers.
“We know that there has to be a bigger focus on automated manufacturing because that’s where we’re transitioning to,” Greene said. “If we aren’t providing those opportunities for our youth and already skilled workers to get new skill sets, if we don’t have those opportunities, our community will continue to fall behind.”
Greene said she looks forward to seeing Madjax expand within the building and within the community.
“It’s the community that’s being developed. And it’s also the opportunity of the possibilities I know are possible here. It’s something that’s very exciting to me,” Greene said. “If we are to continue our efforts and have the support that we’ll need to carry the project out, I really really believe this will transform Muncie. And I think it’ll transform our culture. It’ll transform how we feel about our community, our pride and also our opportunities.”
Contact Andrew Harp and Brynn Mechem at bamechem@bsu.edu or on Twitter @BrynnMechem.
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