Since its founding in September 1980, MUDS has operated from four different studio facilities owned by various community entities with whom it had formed partnerships. From 1980 to 1986 MUDS established its community-based presence when it operated from what had been a vacant storefront facility at 209 South Walnut Street, currently Vera Mae's restaurant. The building was shared with the Mayor's Unemployment Task Force and work release program as MUDS established its partnership with the city administration of Mayor Alan Wilson, more specifically the City of Muncie's Community Development Department, and the Muncie Chamber of Commerce. The partnership with the city has continued uninterrupted to the present day through the administrations of Mayors Carey, Dominick, and Canan, a testimony to the studio's value to City Hall's bipartisan efforts in the redevelopment of both the downtown and its surrounding neighborhoods.

MUDS upgraded the interior of the building's first floor to accommodate both a studio and flexible classroom space and undertook the restoration of the building's original (1881) upper register facade that had been covered with panels in a "1950s modernization." The total rebuilding of the lower register/storefront was based on a design "in the spirit of its original storefront," since the storefront had been totally altered on several occasions over the century and no documentation of its original design could be found.

In fact, a bronze plaque affixed to the right pilaster of the restored storefront commemorates the studio being awarded the 1987 Althea Stoeckel Award by the Muncie Historic Preservation and Rehabilitation Commission. The award recognized the studio's important contributions to public education in historic preservation during its first six years of operation and its restoration and rebuilding of the studio's historic facade. MUDS takes pride in the fact that this work served as a demonstration project to prove the viability of restoring historic facades as an integral component of downtown redevelopment. If you walk down Muncie's Walnut Street today, you can see the impact this project had as dozens of restored facades provide the public image for millions of dollars of public and private sector investment in "America's Middletown."

Tony Costello, FAIA, founding director of MUDS, recalled: "The success of those early years of MUDS owes a great deal to the dedication of faculty members Harry Eggink and the late Dave Hermansen and graduate assistants--now college colleagues--Michel Mounayar and Scott Truex. In addition, hundreds of participating students from architecture, landscape architecture, planning, and historic preservation proved that in undertaking community-based projects in Muncie, a ‘win-win' situation results from their educational experiences providing diverse community constituents with much-needed technical assistance in planning and design matters."

In addition to the previously mentioned preservation/rehabilitation studies of historic facades, early projects undertaken by MUDS included Muncie Charrette '82, which focused on the potential of the White River and downtown revitalization, a new MITS bus station, and an adaptive reuse of the historic Federal Building. The impact of these and other projects as well as the success of this unique public sector/private sector/university partnership from these early years did not go unnoticed outside Muncie as the studio garnered a Certificate of National Recognition in the 1988 U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Excellence for Urban Development Excellence.

Next: Later studio locations reflected diverse partnerships