Kevin Berger

Owner of Easterday Construction Co., Inc. in Culver, IN.

Blast from the Past: The Culver Second Century Committee

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This is mostly a historic reference piece from my memory. I can’t find much in the way of documentation. Forgive me if I misremember and as always, I’ll update it if better documentation comes along. Out of curiosity, I checked Judy’s history page and there wasn’t even a mention of the Second Century Committee, but I know her focus is on older things.

I served on the Culver Chamber of Commerce board of directors from 1990 to 2002, holding every office except chairman. John Thompson worked at the Culver Academies and served on the board and as board chair for several years in the mid 90’s. Jim Dicke II‘s purchase of properties around Culver had not gone unnoticed by the Chamber. He had purchased, demolished, and cleaned up multiple properties around town, but there hadn’t been any movement towards development. (To this day, there are several vacant properties that he still owns.)

Through his connections at Culver Academies, John arranged a meeting with Jim in New Bremen, Ohio. A delegation from the CCC went, including John Thompson, Erik Freeman, Pam Fisher and myself. Jim was a gracious host, giving us a tour of his company, Crown Equipment Corporation, their offices in downtown New Bremen and a general tour of the Town. Over a lunch at a New Bremen restaurant, Jim shared what he had done with New Bremen.

The Village of New Bremen is very much a Crown Equipment Corporation Company Town. Crown Equipment is the main employer in the area and it was in Crown’s best interest for New Bremen to thrive. But as a small town with only one large employer, this was difficult. This was made more challenging by their rural location without direct connections to any major highways. Jim made the decision to invest in the community. Houses were purchased and renovated as Bed & Breakfasts for use by Crown Equipment visiting guests and consultants. A downtown block was purchased, preserving the facades to maintain the local charm, but completely rebuilding everything in the back half to serve as corporate offices, bringing Crown employees and visitors into the downtown. An older car dealership in the downtown was purchased and moved to the edge of town, to allow for more appropriate use of the downtown streetscape. The restaurant we were meeting in was upgraded and kept viable through subsidies in order to be there when Crown Equipment needed a place to take guests.

James Dicke II Photo from https://horatioalger.org/

It was during this meeting that Jim made what I considered an iconic statement, which I have repeated for decades now: “Towns are either growing or dying. They can’t stay the same.” I don’t know if this was an original statement, but I’ve not seen it anywhere else. (There is a version of it from Lou Holtz about individuals that I found, but I’ve always attributed the town version to Jim.)

Jim said his vision of Culver was to see Culver Academies become more integrated into the community as Crown Equipment had done with New Bremen. He said he wanted to see the town of Culver thrive, as he thought it was important to the Culver Academies. You can see his fingerprints on this through the move of some Culver Academies administrative offices to the former Mr. T’s Drug Store at 820 Academy Road and to the former Culver Community School’s administration building at 222 North Ohio Street.

John asked the big question, “What would it take for you to invest in Culver like you’ve invested in New Bremen?” Jim responded that obviously he already had, through some of his property purchases and clean-up, but there wasn’t a clear path for Crown Equipment to have a Culver location. He did say he was happy to continue his efforts to involve Culver Academies in the Town of Culver and would support efforts to bring more industry to Culver. But he added the caveat: the town needs to show they are organized, have a plan and are ready for changes.

Our group was pensive on the return trip to Culver. While we felt we had made progress with the things the Chamber of Commerce was doing, Jim had pointed out some community shortfalls, the most obvious being a lack of collaboration. From this discussion, the Culver Second Century Committee was born. Culver Academies was going through their 1994 centennial celebration. The Town of Culver was previously named Marmont and changed its name to Culver in 1885 to honor Henry Harrison Culver, founder of the school. It seemed fitting that our new group reflect change as the Town of Culver entered its second century.

The Culver Second Century Committee (SCC) was created as an offshoot of the Culver Chamber of Commerce (CCC). This allowed SCC to exist under CCC’s 501c(3) status. This also gave the CCC some oversight and responsibility for the group, but allowed other groups to participate without direct CCC membership. There were no membership dues or other impediments to participation. We actively recruited participation from the town government and other civic groups such as the Lions, Kiwanis, Tri Kappa and others. The goal was to start a dialogue and create some synergy between the groups and to have some common projects in lieu of each group raising funds for similar efforts.

The group formed a steering committee consisting of four members. It intentionally recruited a mix of Chamber members and non-Chamber members for the steering committee to reinforce the collaborative goal. I did not serve on the initial steering committee, but did serve for a time after the initial member’s terms expired. The group began having quarterly lunch meetings which resulted in a true collaborative spirit. Town government representatives were involved as well, so we had a wide spectrum.

The first major thing tackled by the group was the Community Needs Assessment and Recommendations conducted by Mary Means & Associates, Inc. out of Alexandria, Virginia. (I believe the Town of Culver has copies of the original document, but I couldn’t find it online to provide a link. I do have a copy if anyone would like me to share it.) The Community Needs Assessment was completed in October of 1997. This was not a deep diving document, but it did gather public input and act as a catalyst for next steps. Even back then housing was an issue mentioned. There was also a recommendation for updates to the Comprehensive Plan and the Zoning Ordinance.

SCC continued to meet and push for changes. The next piece to come out of the Needs Assessment was the Culver Community Charrette lead by Ratio Architects. This resulted in the Culver Community Charrette Handbook presented in November of 1998. Ratio Architects built on and expanded the ideas in the Needs Assessment, defining some of the themes of Culver to expand upon. An example of this was the use of fieldstone throughout Culver, which lead to the Chamber sponsoring the new sign with fieldstone columns at the 10 & 17 entrance to town and the covering of the Lakeshore Drive wall across from the Root Beer Stand with fieldstone. Sand Hill Farm used this theme with the entrance sign on Sand Hill Boulevard. The Paddocks used this theme with the fieldstone facades on the townhomes in their development.

Welcome to Culver Sign at intersection of 10 & 17

After the charrette, Ratio Architects was hired to update the Culver Comprehensive Plan. That version of the plan incorporated many of the themes from the Needs Assessment and the Community Charrette. While this was a Culver Plan Commission project, the Second Century Committee remained involved. But unfortunately, as the ownership of the project transitioned to the town, some of the collaboration and commitment to SCC waned.

Over time, the SCC steering committee became less of a guiding group and started becoming more of an action group. I was no longer part on the steering committee, but still attended the meetings. Unfortunately, in this time frame, the meetings with the larger group ceased and the underlying groups had less stake in SCC. Culver Chamber was going through some transitions as well, so SCC was mostly on its own.

For a while the SCC steering committee was taking on different projects. For example, Dick Brantingham was on the steering committee for years and shepherded the sidewalk program, working to pair residents and/or businesses on the same block with the town’s replacement assistance program in order to maximize the impact. There were other projects like that as well.

In 2011, the SCC made another change in direction as it became part of Indiana Main Street and got rolled into the Visitors Center and/or one of the other organizations. To the best of my knowledge, the Second Century Committee didn’t make it through the first quarter of Culver’s new century and if there are remnants, it no longer functions as intended.

Connecting Dots…

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110 North Main Street

A couple of weeks ago I posted about going to the initial Collaborate Culver meeting, where there was a discussion about missing businesses. I suggested the possibility of some incubator space for potential new businesses to try out Culver rather than going all in on a new store front. Geno Nannini made a stab at this years ago, by renovating the Masonic Lodge (Henry H. Culver Lodge No. 617 F. & A. M.) building at 110 North Main Street, subdividing the second floor lodge space into apartments and subdividing the first floor into individual offices/shops. A mix of small businesses, Churches and Not-for-Profits have occupied the spaces over time.

Last year I spoke to the owner of the former trailer park site at 515 West Jefferson Street in Culver about his idea of putting up small, temporary shop facilities. He indicated that he had spoke to town officials about making that happen, but he didn’t get much traction with them. I think at this time he’s in talks about a hotel on that site.

Bringing this full circle, Bremen has been talking about a project called Bremen Village Shops, which sounds very similar to what was suggested for the trailer park property. That project should be coming to fruition this summer. It is being done in conjunction with the Town of Bremen. They are working through logistics, since the property is currently owned by the Bremen Redevelopment Commission and there are legal issues with having them serve as a landlord.

If the Bremen Village Shops are successful, maybe the Town of Culver will warm to the idea and consider something similar for Culver, whether at 515 West Jefferson, or on another site. It’s an interesting concept and it seems like an creative way to get some new businesses to give Culver a chance. Meanwhile, if anyone is interested, I don’t think 100 North Main Street is completely full…

Who should organize Culver?

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There was an interesting discussion at the Culver Redevelopment Commission (CRC) last Thursday about potentially hiring someone to coordinate the various volunteer efforts in town. At one point the Town Manager referenced my post: Culver needs an Infrastructure Czar, saying that he felt this was a similar situation where Culver has lots of volunteers, often with the same people on different committees, but there was no coordinated effort. Years ago, this was the reason the Culver Second Century Committee was created… to coordinate all of the volunteer efforts. This sounds similar, but with paid staff. Can’t believe I haven’t written the story of the Second Century Committee, so I’ll put that on my list of things to do here. It was basically started as an off-shoot of the Culver Chamber of Commerce in order to coordinate the volunteer effort of the various Culver Not-For-Profits. It flourished and morphed, but eventually became defunct over time.

One board member spoke about the success of the Culver Stellar Committee and then Marshall County Stellar Committee (Marshall County Crossroads), but then expressed disappointment that the offshoots, the Culver Crossroads Committee and the One Marshall County Committee haven’t moved projects forward post Stellar. Her take-away was the need for paid staff to direct the volunteers and keep people on task. This is the route One Marshall County is pursuing, while Culver Crossroads basically hasn’t met since completing the new (2024) Culver Comprehensive Plan.

I think the discussion was good, but I think there was a point missed about why the Stellar committees succeeded and the follow-up committees are failing. In my opinion, despite labeling themselves as committees, both the town and county Stellar groups were actually task forces. A Task Force by definition is a temporary group created to deal with a specific issue, usually made up of people chosen for their knowledge or experience in the subject. This is a key difference, since with a task force, there are defined goals and a deadline or deadlines to meet those goals. With a deadline, there comes a sense of urgency. This is what the Culver and Marshall County Stellar groups were.

I liked a lot of the points made at the CRC, such as reducing the number of meetings and organizing the various groups to keep them focused on common tasks. (When I was on the chamber board, we talked about “The 10 people that do everything…”. They were generally involved in all the various organizations, often in leadership positions, until their time was stretched, their efforts were diluted and they eventually burnt out and disappeared.) But… A town employee doing this is expansion of bureaucracy and most of us know that this could easily become the camel’s nose under the tent. My experience is that bureaucracies tend to be more about self-preservation than accomplishing things. I look at the City of Plymouth that had an engineering consultant a couple of decades ago, which became a full-time engineer, which became a full-time engineer with an assistant engineer, which became a full-time engineer and assistant engineer, farming work out to an engineering consultant. All with little change to the City of Plymouth population. Metrics of what success looks like as well as deadlines for that success are critical in my opinion. Mission creep isn’t automatically bad, but needs to be controlled and subject to oversight and approval.

From a serial volunteer’s perspective, I know committees tend to talk things to death and committee members that volunteer to do something are easily side-tracked by work, family and general life obligations. If Stellar committee (task force) items weren’t completed, well and on time, the Stellar reward was off the table. There was a sense of urgency that a standing committee rarely, if ever, feels. It takes a special employee to maintain that urgency on a consistent basis.

It will be interesting to watch how this plays out. If the town does pursue this, I hope they find that special employee.

Collaborate Culver

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I attended the first Collaborate Culver meeting on March 5th. The group is mostly downtown merchants, so I’m not sure why I was asked to attend. I’m always interested in what’s going on in Culver, so I decided to spend a couple of hours and see what I would learn.

The group was mostly comprised of downtown merchants. The stated goal was to bring together business interests and prepare a list of wants and needs for the community assessment being put together with funding from the Culver Redevelopment Commission. For those interested, the first Downtown Strategies community assessment meeting will be at the Culver Union Township Public Library on April 1st, Noon to 1:30.

For better or worse, I was the oldest business represented there as well as the person with the longest history of community involvement. As such, I tried to sit quietly (hard for me!) and not squelch any enthusiasm. The reason I say that, is many of the ideas brought up were not new… either having been discarded or having experienced trial and failure in the past.

It was great to see a large number of new faces there. In fact, other than myself, none of the more established businesses were represented. Some of them may be jaded, like myself, and have a “been there, done that” attitude towards starting a new group. I get that, but if that’s the case, I hope they at least stay out of the way, if they choose not to directly support the new group. We always talk about wanting “new blood”, but we need to support the new people and not be wet blankets.

One of the more important discussions was regarding Zoning. There was no consensus from the group, but the discussion points were salient. Some wanted to see more downtown buildings converted to housing. Others were adamantly against that. There seemed to be consensus that a mix was good and encouraging second floor housing was positive. There was also a discussion of the limited commercial lots available. I mentioned that the Plan Commission had rezoned the Easterday Dentist office back to residential after the dentistry shut down. There seemed to be consensus that the change was not positive. I couldn’t speak to the status of that going forward, since the Plan Commission had discussed rezoning the other houses used as businesses back to residential, but the Comprehensive Plan advocated the other direction, suggesting allowing expansion of the commercial areas. (A better compromising solution would be Hierarchal Zoning rather than Euclidian Zoning as is used in Culver now.)

There was also discussion of more collaboration. I repeated my Main Street Mantra, suggesting that they need to work like a mall and coordinate hours of operations, sales events and other things that create a place people want to stay after visiting one location. I also reiterated my admiration for Wabash and their efforts to cross advertise the commercial areas via sidewalk ads. I asked how many of them had ads for other Culver businesses at their locations and suggested collaborating on that would create more of a Culver Destination, cultivating those that already came for their merchant of choice.

The only thing I felt was a negative was a list of missing businesses and a desire for the town government to somehow foster them. I am always surprised when this kind of thing comes up amongst a group of entrepreneurs. They should understand the difficulties in creating a start up business. If they were truly convinced that these missing ventures would be successful, why aren’t they investing and profiting from them on their own? I did suggest that if this was truly a need they saw, maybe the approach would be to recruit an existing business from a neighboring municipality to set up a trial satellite facility and test the waters. Setting up in some incubator space would be a much more economical venture than going all in on a new store or business. We already have several of these operating in town.

The thing I thought was missing in the conversation was The Dunes. No one truly knows how that project will affect the town. The percentage of full time residents will remain a mystery until leasing reveals it. That still doesn’t change the fact that there will be an additional influx of residents, if it is successful in any form. If it successfully brings in people from outside Culver, the local merchants need to become known. I pointed out that Culver doesn’t have a Welcome Wagon or an active Chamber… two of the main methods that outsiders learn about the community and it’s businesses. Getting something in front of them as them move in could make a critical first impression.

Chamber of Commerce in Culver

There was further discussion about the Culver Chamber of Commerce (CCC) and its rocky relationship with the town government. I suggested that I thought that could be reformed. I also suggested that reviving the CCC would be more effective than creating a similar entity, since Chambers are a known entity and often the first place visitors and new residents turn to learn about their community. This discussion was left with the group assigning several volunteers to look into this further.

All in all, it seemed like a good group and I wish them the best. I hope the group gels and is able to do some good things. I don’t know how much I’ll participate going forward as I don’t really have a retail presence nor much of a connection to it, but as always, I’m more than happy to kibitz and share my experience and knowledge.