Western Michigan University is eyeing a plan to build a research center in Niles to aid its archaeological work at Fort St. Joseph. During a recent council meeting, city officials agreed to consider the idea offered by anthropology professor Dr. Michael Nassaney, who has led student field work at the fort site. "It basically is a conceptual idea," Niles City Administrator Terry Eull said. "We don't yet know what the building would be. Western is doing all the work," he added. The proposed center may feature an area for artifacts, a classroom and living quarters where students could stay when they come from Kalamazoo to Niles to conduct archaeological digs at Fort St. Joseph, Eull said. Nassaney's field work with students led to the discovery in 2002 of the fort site along the St. Joseph River near Bond Street, south of the French Paper Company dam. Nassaney was invited years ago by the Niles group, Support the Fort, to search for the elusive fort. The group surveyed an overgrown, swampy area that had once been a farm field and city dump and the perimeter of the old fort site. Fort St. Joseph was a garrison-mission-trading post created by the French in 1691 but was occupied by various settlers for the next hundred years. [...]