I am currently serving on committees in Plymouth and Culver working on new Comprehensive Plans (or Com Plans). These documents are governed by State statute, but leave some flexibility to the communities. Sometimes the term “dream” is used with these documents, as in, “What would be your dream use for this area.” or “Dream Big!”. That leans much more towards fantasy for my liking. My preferred term is “Vision”. The heart of the Comp Plan are the land use maps… the “plan” part of the Comp Plan. It’s a visual tool detailing what the community would like to see and where that is.
There are several stumbling blocks for most people in this process. The first is that Comp Plans usually have a life of 5-10 years. (Plymouth’s last Comp Plan was completed in 2013 and Culver’s was completed in 2014.) People can become fixated on that short time horizon. While the Comp Plan should be revisited and updated every 5-10 years, the plan should be for 25-50 years, as theoretically the community continues on in perpetuity. This makes the 5-10 year update more of a tweak, removing things from the previous to-do list that have been completed and to adjust the overall plan for new trends that have developed. The Vision should be longer.
The second hang-up is a struggle to look past what’s there now and who owns that property. Most people look at a parcel of land and say, “I know that landowner and they would never go for that.” But… this is where they need to be thinking farther into the future than the 5-10 year life of the Comp Plan. The municipality will be here 25, 50 & 100 years from now. Will that landowner? Will that building still be viable? Will that street be there? The Vision should be longer.
The third major hang-up is separating the Comp Plan from the Zoning Ordinance. The Comp Plan lays out what the community would like to see. The Zoning Ordinance lays out what is allowed. There can and should be a difference. This is where a zoning hierarchy would be useful. In a discussion in a Culver meeting last week, we discussed the current Comp Plan’s direction for Main Street between Washington Street and Lake Shore Drive to be future Commercial. We discussed extending that to Lake Shore Drive between Main Street and State Street. This brought up discussion of the recent rezoning of a house on Main Street from Commercial to Residential. (Rezoning of 303 North Main Street discussed here.) The rezoning of 415 Lake Shore Drive was discussed as well. I look at these differently. While I have no problem with the reversion of 303 back to a home, there should have been a way to make that accommodation under the commercial zoning, leaving the long term vision in place. I would say the same accommodation should have been made for 415. While the new construction at 415 will theoretically be there longer, the townhouses planned are denser development and a reasonable intermediate step between single family residential and commercial. The strict district designations need to be softened to allow more mixed development. Furthermore, townhouses mixed in with commercial spaces are a reasonable long term plan in a walkable community.
For my Lurkers, this is not the first time I’ve pushed the Vision idea. I really thought Culver missed the boat not redoing their Comp Plan in 2020 and calling it 20/20 Vision. The whole pesky pandemic thing kind of got in the way, not to mention the Town Manager at that time had Stellar Fatigue and despite the Stellar Communities SAP accomplishing much of what was in the 2014 Comp Plan, he didn’t want to create new goals that he would be charged with achieving. Ha!
As with most of these things, there will be more to come. I’m pleased with Culver and Plymouth putting forth the effort and while I was hesitant about them at first, I’m pleased with MACOG‘s administration of the planning. (Thanks Donny!) Everybody work on their Vision. Do your best to envision what’s over the horizon, not just what can be seen today.
It came to my attention the other day that there are people suggesting that The Dunes not have a street connection to the Town and only connect to S.R. 17 to the west. This seems ludicrous to me, from a planning standpoint, an economic development standpoint and a citizen involvement standpoint. Aside from the bad planning involved with this idea, it is probably a logistical moot point. 1) S.R. 17 is a limited access highway and INDOT is rather jealous with their driveway permits and 2) Cabinetworks owns the parcel to the west between The Dunes and S.R. 17 and are unlikely to want to bisect it with a road. *The picture to the right shows the relationship between the property being developed as The Dunes and S.R. 17.)
Interestingly though, this seems to be a recurring “problem” in Culver. This goes back to at least the early mid 2000’s when The Riggings were initially developed on the north side of town with its street, Anchors Way. At the time of the initial development, the town required a connection to State Street, but later the development was allowed to void that connection. Similarly, there were no connections required between The Riggings and the adjacent vacant property to the west.
West of the The Riggings, the Maple Ridge PUD subdivision was built a few years later. It again does not connect back into Culver, but only connects out to S.R. 10. Maple Ridge was not required to provide any connection points to adjacent properties.
This came up again with The Paddocks with a suggestion that it connect with S.R. 17 in lieu of Jefferson Street. (The Paddocks connects to Culver on Jefferson Street and includes long range plans to connect back to Academy Road to the north.) And then again, the Culver Meadows development proposed on the NW corner of town by Culver Investment Corp (CIC) was allowed to proceed through the primary PUD process with no connections back to Culver.
The Culver Meadows project was particularly troubling since it was allowed to ignore the Culver Comprehensive Plan recommendations for the extension of Academy Road to S.R.17. The reasoning given for not making the connection a requirement was that there were property owners between Culver Meadows and Academy Road that were opposed to the connection. But that is short-sighted. The Town of Culver is theoretically here in perpetuity. Those homeowners will change over time. Culver Meadows should have been required to provide their portion of the required Right-of-Way through their property and Culver could have waited for the right time to make the connection using that Right-of-Way. CIC was already planning a connection to S.R. 17, so it was just a matter of making that connection where it could serve both needs.
From the developer’s standpoint, these controlled entrances are the next best thing to creating gated communities, but with the benefit of dedicating the streets for municipal maintenance. Theoretically they are reducing traffic in the development to their residents only. This is part of the mindset where we’re seeing more privacy fences and complaints at Council meetings about street traffic. The last drawing I saw for The Dunes has a single entrance and that didn’t even align with adjacent streets. (That drawing is several months old.) There are reasons why towns are laid out on grids and Cul-de-Sac developments lead to more sprawl. (See previous post here.) Grids don’t always work, but the connections are still important.
Connected streets cut down on traffic bottlenecks. What are the residents of The Dunes going to do when street work is required at the entrance? That’s 200 residences with no redundant connection. There is a reason water lines are looped. The same principle applies to streets.
Connected streets promote walking and biking. They invite current residents into the new neighborhoods and vice versa. This is how connections are made. This is where a new resident might get invited to a local Church or civic club. This is how they hear about town initiatives.
Connected streets promote block parties, garage sales and other community involvement activities. The goal of new development goes beyond the head count and ad valorem increase. Culver should want the new residents to become community members. We don’t need more part-time residents and we don’t want to be a bedroom community.
I talked about changing The Dunes’ connections to the town before. (here) I think that idea should be expanded to include additional connections. Make them part of our community for the future. Maybe this is another case made for an Infrastructure Czar… And as far as a connection to S.R. 17? Let’s suggest connection points to the west and south for future development. It’s just good planning.
Inside Indiana Business reported that three Indiana Cities took positions in the Wall Street Journal’s list of Top Ten Places for Remote Workers: Evansville was #3, Lafayette was #5 and Fort Wayne was #10. The topic of remote workers comes up often at the Culver Crossroads meetings. While Culver has done a lot to become attractive to remote workers, I’m not sure we’ve done much to actually attract remote workers.
Culver saw a lot of remote workers during the pandemic. Not surprising that a community of second homes became a desirable location to shelter-in-place. One advantage that Culver had over the cities listed above (for sheltering in place) was our small size. We have many of the necessary amenities without the large population. We undoubtedly missed an opportunity to capture more of those remote workers.
While we have boosted our amenities, we can’t compete with small city amenities such as colleges. (Though to some extend, Culver Academies fills a lot of that gap. That’s not necessarily obvious to someone looking in from the outside.) What we should do is promote our proximity to these. Two of the above cities, Lafayette and Fort Wayne, are within 75 miles of Culver. Lafayette gives us proximity to Purdue. South Bend and Notre Dame are 45 miles away. Chicago is only 76 miles away! Michigan Wine Country is only 76 miles away. We’re only 100 miles of Indianapolis. Yet we only continue to promote Culver as a destination. The Culver Visitors Center promotes itself as Find Culver.
What if we were to also promote Culver as a hub? Marshall County Economic Development Corporation has been doing this with manufacturers for years, pointing out the manufacturing centers and vast population within a 200 mile radius of Marshall County. (One of those interesting statistics is that there are more people within 200 miles of Marshall County, IN than within 200 miles of Atlanta, GA.)
I know we’re still working on things and there are some issues, such as broadband, yet to be solved, but I don’t think it’s too soon to talk about why Culver is a great place to live, not just a great place to visit. This is an across the board thing. Look at the sign CabinetWorks has promoting working in Culver (above) and the image from their website promoting Culver itself (right). How do we extend their suggestion of working in Culver to living in Culver. Culver assisted Sand Hill Farm Apartments and The Paddocks bringing in workforce housing. They are in the process of helping two other developers bring in upper income housing. Is it possible to broaden the Culver Visitors Center’s mission to include finding new residents, not just visitors?
I met some Culverites for dinner recently and they asked some questions that got me thinking. I thought I would share some of my thoughts here. I would credit them for some of this, but since I didn’t ask their permission, they get to remain anonymous. Probably safer for them anyway! Ha!
They wanted my thoughts on a new development in Culver. (One they wanted to pursue, not one of the current ones moving through the processes.) To be honest, I found myself struggling to stay positive. That was not the case 6 years ago when Culver was in the middle of their two Stellar applications. I was on those two committees and while there were some naysayers, as there always are, they were far outweighed by those with a sense of enthusiasm and camaraderie that pulled the community together.
To be clear, I don’t want to belittle what has been accomplished in the last few years. Culver’s Stellar designation has been parlayed into two grants awarded through the Regional Cities Initiative, at least five grants from the Marshall County Community Foundation and matching grants from OCRA, IHDCA and INDOT. So far this has resulted in a new Amphitheater in the Park, major renovations to the Beach Lodge, a new sports park with a playground on school property, new walking/biking trails as well as ancillary benefits not directly funded tied to Stellar, but resulting from Stellar.
When we first started down the path of toward Stellar designation, the scuttlebutt was that Stellar had the reputation of a “Mayor Killer”. In several communities that had attempted or received Stellar designations, the Mayor that promoted the effort was voted out in the next term. OCRA’s assessment of this was that this was mostly due to things not happening quickly enough, allowing opponents to point to the outlays involved with Stellar and profess there was no return on the investment.
Culver didn’t really have that issue as there were enough people involved in Stellar and enough of them understood the time lines in order to refute those claims. Ginny Munroe as our de facto Mayor didn’t let things languish and the town remained well informed about the progress. We’ve lost Ginny’s leadership at this point and there is a void with the Council.
Ginny began Culver Crossroads to chart the next steps for Culver, but I feel that it is losing it’s momentum. I initially served on two Culver Crossroads subcommittees which have fizzled out. One is gone and the second is really down to one person doing the work of the committee. The Culver Crossroads steering committee is also serving as the steering committee to revise the comprehensive plan and that feels like it is losing steam as well. It is odd, because I know there are people on that committee that are still motivated and excited about change, but my feeling is that this isn’t translating into much action between meetings.
On top of that, we have community members actively trying to sabotage input surveys with negativity. We have decent projects being opposed in public meetings and in some cases derailed by procedural attacks. We have seen project support pulled without discussion. All of these things are troubling.
To go back to the conversation I referenced above, I don’t feel like the town’s elected leaders and appointed boards have the same appetite for change that they did when Stellar started. They are still moving some things forward, but it feels like it’s being done with a more scatter-shot approach. We’re going back to dealing with individual things in lieu of pursuing our aspirations of bigger and better things. (Blue Zones is an aspirational project and the recent handling of that didn’t look good.) The three largest projects that are being worked on by the town are all projects brought to them by developers rather than projects they have specifically pursued to meet new goals. That’s a switch in mindset.
It’s not hopeless. It’s just harder than it was and harder than it needs to be. Culver Crossroads is working to create new aspirations for the town. Hopefully the town officials will embrace them and move them forward.
Rose Among Thorns
May 16, 2023
Kevin Berger
Commentary, Culver
Community, Culver, Culver Redevelopment Commission, government, Volunteering
I was at the Culver Town Council Meeting on the 9th. They appointed Lilly Arzola to the Culver Redevelopment Commission (CRC). She made a nice introduction and said that she is a life-long resident and now that her son is out of high school, she wanted to give back to the community. I think it’s great that she’s stepping up. My odd sense of humor can’t help but look at the make up of the CRC and the Town Council and wonder… Sally would be called a Rose among Thorns as the only woman on the Town Council. What would you call Marty Oosterbaan as the only man on the CRC now? Inquiring minds want to know!
Moving on…
The CRC has been more active than most redevelopment commissions. Often redevelopment commissions are accused of hording money, but the CRC has actively put their dollars to work in the community. It will be interesting to see what the new group decides to do as there is only one returning member this year. Of course, as always, I have opinions and suggestions! Here are a few:
Blighted Properties: There are five commercial properties in and around Culver that are constantly discussed as needing improvements. I’ll not be naming names here, but most of you reading this will have properties come to mind. In some cases, the CRC/Town have gone to the point of getting appraisals to consider buying them. They have also pursued them at tax sales and through the Unsafe Building Committee in Culver and Marshall County. They have been met with resistance from the owners who don’t see their properties in the same light. What if these property owners were approached as partners in lieu of adversaries?
Expansion Opportunities: There are businesses in Culver that could expand with assistance. In some cases there maybe a lack of knowledge and in others it could just be a perception that the expansion wouldn’t be welcomed. Here are a few that come to mind:
Online Presence: The CRC contributed to the effort to bring SURF broadband to Culver. They could champion community education on how to take advantage of this:
Transition Assistance: Long time businesses that are fixtures in the community often disappear when there’s not clear transition path. Bennett’s was a long-time Culver business that closed last year. Was the town aware they were closing? Did the town offer any assistance to prevent that closure? Is the town working with them after the closure for a new occupant for that building? Another example would be the Evil Czech on the Davis Street. While the town benefited when the lot was donated to them, wouldn’t it have been better for the town if a replacement business was there?
Promote Viable Businesses: Often small business owners are too busy just keeping the doors open to even know what help is available. This goes along with the previous transition assistance with the CRC providing a clearing house of resources available to small businesses:
I’m sure there are lots of other things and the new commission members will have come in with their own goals. That said, the CRC is a group that always has a lot of potential for making positive changes in Culver. I hope the new group takes that mission seriously and is able to make things happen. From the brief introductions, I think they are.
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