Och Center for Metropolitan Studies name change reception

Chattanooga’s central research agency has a new name.

The Ochs Center for Metropolitan Studies unveiled its name change Monday and showed off its new facilities on the campus of the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. The organization, formerly known as the Community Research Council, had been located on Frazier Avenue.

Before 2000, the group was referred to as the Metropolitan Council for the United Way of Greater Chattanooga.

The Ochs Center, now at 739 McCallie Ave., conducts research for not-for-profit agencies and governments. It’s best known for its annual State of Chattanooga Region Report, but it also conducts research into the economy and community; youth and education; health; crime and public safety; urban governance; and environment and sustainable development. The Center is funded through charitable contributions.

Leaders say the new name reflects the center’s evolving mission of delivering easy-to-understand, research-based reporting locally as well as on an ever-growing regional and national level.

“We thought our name no longer described what we were doing and where we were doing it,” said David Eichenthal, president of the center. “So we wanted a name that was rooted in this community and its history and at the same time aspired, the way that we do, to have an impact beyond our region. There’s no better name than the Ochs family name.”

When he was 19 in 1878, Adolph S. Ochs purchased a controlling interest in the Chattanooga Times newspaper. In 1896, he purchased The New York Times, and today his family continues to control most of the now publicly traded New York Times Co.

His granddaughter, Ruth S. Holmberg, was publisher of the Chattanooga Times, which later merged with the Chattanooga Free Press. She gave the center permission to use her family name, saying her grandfather valued good research and strong community advocacy.

“My family is truly honored to have our name used in this way. We believed always in fact checking — as you can tell by reading Ochs newspapers — as well as progress and change,” Ms. Holmberg said Monday.

She noted her grandfather also published Chattanooga’s first city directory.

The name-change announcement came with a reception in the council’s new building on McCallie Avenue. The first floor of the building is occupied by UTC’s Center for Applied Social Research, while the Ochs Center occupies the second story. University leaders and Ochs Center officials say the close proximity of the two groups is indicative of a new partnership.

“This organization, both the organizations that share this building, have a strong track record of gathering information, analyzing it and presenting it in formats decision makers can understand,” said Dr. Roger Brown, UTC’s chancellor.

Mr. Eichenthal said the new bonds will expand the center’s reach.

“It makes physical and real the partnership we hope to have moving forward with the university,” he said. “Their terrific faculty members, their terrific students involved in their program, we hope will be involved even more now.”