Disappointing…

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The February meeting of the Culver Plan Commission has been cancelled because “there are no agenda items”… This is a missed opportunity to tackle the myriad of suggestions from the the new (last year) Comprehensive Plan.

For Example, this would have been a great opportunity to invite Donny Ritsema from MACOG to come speak about areas of the new Comprehensive Plan that fall under the plan commission’s purview. Donny lead MACOG’s group (along with Olivia Nix) that helped coordinate the comp plan steering committee, helped organize much of the public input and produced the final plan. I’m sure he could have helped define a plan of attack and weeded through what needed addressed by the Plan Commission on their own and for some things, in concert with the Town Council or other Town entities.

I would suggest that the Comprehensive Plan should be a standing agenda item for the Plan Commission as a reminder that there are things to address. When there is a pressing agenda that takes a lot of time, then it would get passed over, but when there is a short agenda or like this month, nothing coming before them from outside, then it could be picked up and moved forward. Incremental advances are better than nothing. As always, I respect that the Plan Commission members are volunteers and appreciate the time they put in. It’s often a thankless job. The comp plan items should be easy items to move forward though. Those items have already gone through community review, plan commission review and town council adoption. Now we just need to implement them.

For some of my previous thoughts on this, see my Implementing Culver’s Comprehensive Plan post.

Water Street Townhomes Update

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I’ve been remiss in posting project updates, but you can always see what’s been posted in the past using the search box at that shows up on most pages. You can click here and see what’s been posted.

This project has had some struggles getting off the ground. Despite having funds from READI and the City of Plymouth to invest, getting a construction loan and securing permanent financing proved a challenge. Construction costs remain high and getting to an acceptable debt service ratio was challenging. We spoke to nine financial institutes before settling on Interra Credit Union for this project. Even after making that decision, the commitment process was slow. All of the financial institutes seem skittish about committing to long term financing in the current market.

Jeff Houin, Taryn MacFarlane, Randy Lehman, Kevin Berger, Lynn Gorski, Mayor Robert Listenberger, Don Ecker,Brent Martin, Linda Starr, Dave Morrow, Mike Miley, Alan Hauger

We have made our first draw request to READI on January 15th and currently are being told it may be another 30-45 days before we see funds released. We made our first draw request to the City of Plymouth on January 8th to start the process for approval with the Redevelopment Commission meeting on the 21st, but despite approval there, the bond fiduciary has not released funds to us. It is hard to complain about the injection of funds that make this project possible, but the delays mean we will incur additional interest expense to cover costs until the payments come in.

We broke ground on the project December 17th, 2024. Those gold shovels have traveled to a lot of sites over the years! Mayor Listenberger asked us to delay actual construction until after Christmas to keep the parking lot open for holiday shopping. We literally broke ground December 26th, with excavation starting that day.

Progress as of 1-27-25

Excavation is mostly complete for the building footprint. We have been fortunate that most of the debris we have uncovered has been relatively easy to remove. As always, there was some “fun” stuff, like an active waterline that ran back under the parking lot, through the excavation, from Water Street before it was capped. That made for a muddy day before being resolved. As of now, footings are in place for the townhomes and a large percentage of the basement walls are complete. We should see basement waterproofing start this week and backfill shortly after that. We’re working through the framing shop drawings to get the wall panels released.

We are still looking for completion in late Fall of ’25. We would love to accelerate that if we can!

Growing or Dying

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Years ago I was part of a group that went to New Bremen, Ohio. We went there as a delegation from the Culver Chamber of Commerce to meet with Jim Dicke II, to discuss how to turn around Culver and possibly get his assistance. Jim had been instrumental through his company, Crown Equipment, in revitalizing New Bremen. From that small group and the then Culver Chamber Board, the Culver Second Century Committee was born. (More on that another day.) One thing he said in that meeting has stuck with me over the years, “Communities are either growing or dying. There is no such thing as staying status quo.” (I don’t know if it was a personal statement or someone else’s, but I always attribute it to him.) I’ve repeated that over the years in multiple settings. I generally try and attribute it to Jim, but even when I don’t, I’m not too concerned, because it fits with one of my other favorite quotes, “Plagiarism is the Sincerest Form of Flattery.” Which I first saw in a B.C. Comic by Johnny Hart…

In this case, I am asking that question about Marshall County, as one of the first actions of the new County Commissioners was to enact a moratorium on projects that involve Solar Farms, Battery Storage Facilities, Carbon Capture and Data Centers. While I understand some of the arguments about Solar (though I don’t necessarily agree, I’ve discussed that here and here), I am particularly interested here in stopping Data Centers.

Data Centers have been protested in other areas for many reasons. One of them, NYMBYism, seems to be the main one behind these efforts. The protests are not coming from our Amish community, so most of the protestors have cell phones and use the internet. I assume they’re not against them as a concept. I also find that interesting coming from the Commissioners, some of whom have expressed their support for our new President, Donald Trump. In a January 7th press conference, President-elect Trump introduced an investor group, DAMAC, planning to bring $20 billion dollars in data center investment to the U.S. In the speech, he specifically called out Indiana as one of the places to benefit from this investment. Though apparently not Marshall County, per our moratorium.

The others reasons don’t seem to apply or could be controlled. There are complaints from other areas that they use too much power… but that’s what’s drawn them here… our somewhat unique position as a crossroads of power grids. Interestingly, the same reason that the solar farm developers have been drawn here, though for the opposite use, i.e. solar farms uploads power and data centers downloads power. The second complaint is excessive use of water, but that’s been mostly corrected and we don’t have a water shortage here. Also, in other areas they are concerned about the draw on existing water infrastructure, but this moratorium is in the County… which does not have a water system. The third complaint is potential pollution from back-up generators, but again, we’re on a major grid line and if that goes down, there’s a lot more to worry about than back-up generator exhaust! A couple of interesting resources here and here.

The main point here is that we seem to be moving towards an anti-development stance in the county. This despite a new national movement to reduce development impediments, Marshall County seems to be focused on setting up road blocks. I realize that some of this is grassroots, but that doesn’t mean it’s based in facts. It seems to be more based in NIMBYism and lack of knowledge. All of these things would increase our tax base, with minimum disruption to our communities. Yes, they should be researched and possibly controlled, but two years from now, we may lament being passed by.

While a data center wouldn’t employ a lot of people in the long term, it would generate jobs during construction. Once completed, it would be low impact on roads, i.e. no semi-traffic as with other manufacturing. Besides the building itself, they do not use up as much land. They are often taller than our general manufacturing construction, sometimes building 90 feet high. They don’t have larger numbers of regular employees, so no acres of asphalt parking lots. We already have setback requirements, impervious surface requirements and if we don’t want to give exceptions on heights, we have existing height restrictions.

But we currently have a moratorium. So what is our alternative? MCEDC has spearheaded three shell buildings in the past, with what seems to be great success. Are more on the horizon? The last one the building in the Plymouth Industrial park at the SE corner of Pioneer and Jim Neu Drive, which currently houses Divert. It has been occupied since 2022. Is there another in the works? Seems that there should be.

I don’t know what the answer is to the growth question. MCEDC is trying, but it’s hard to do without the County behind them and with headlines that make us seem anti-development. If the County Commissioners and County Council have another plan, I haven’t heard it yet. Hopefully they have something in mind. Because Communities are either growing or dying and I don’t think they want to preside over the latter.

Edit: Yesterday, January 28th, 2025, I attended the PIDCO Annual meeting. The guest speakers were from NIPSCO. The topic of data centers came up as well as wind & solar. Several things of note were mentioned that I thought were worth adding here:

  1. Marshall County is well positioned to vie for these new developments do to the proximity to the new transmission lines.
  2. Any infrastructure or increased capacity costs related to a data center would be born by the developer and not the existing rate payers.
  3. NIPSCO is eager to help if we would choose to pursue a data center.
  4. NIPSCO is required to have capacity for it’s projected power needs, exclusive of renewables like wind and solar for those time when renewables aren’t available, i.e. when the wind’s not blowing and the sun’s not shining… Regardless of whether wind and solar developments are pursued, NIPSCO is exploring battery storage to even out their capacity and take advantage of storage to supplement electric service when production costs are at their highest.

Leroy Bean

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Leroy William Bean

Easterday Construction lost another long time employee last week. Leroy Bean worked for Easterday Construction Company for over 43 years, His funeral was last Friday and not only featured an ECC hat hanging by the casket, but his time with Easterdays was mentioned throughout the ceremony.

Leroy’s family has had an outsized connection to Easterday Construction with not only Leroy’s long legacy, but both of his grandsons, at least four of his nephews and one great nephew working for us at one time or another. Nephew Bob continues with us and has been here with a tenure rivaling Leroy’s. He also has a similar career path, moving from truck driver and laborer, to skilled trades to job superintendent today. Listening to the impact Easterday Construction had on Leroy and his immediate family was humbling. ECC has always been a family business and that extends to employees and their families as well.

Leroy Bean’s Obituary

Leroy had an outside impact on ECC and the Culver Community. Active in several local organizations while working for ECC, he continued that through his retirement. (See the adjacent obituary.) It’s obvious that not only will he be missed by his family, but also by the ECC family and the Culver community too.

We used to do a newsletter called the Easterday Parade. in volume 1, No. 6, October 1990, there was an employee profile on Leroy. Here’s the text of that profile:

Leroy William Bean has been an employee of Easterday Construction Company since 10/01/62. Nearly 20 years ago, Leroy was hired by Russell L. Easterday as a truck drive, to work and make deliveries out of the shop. He held this position working under Cubby Bair for approximately 3 years, until the office began receiving too many complaints about Leroy from the job sites. Apparently, Leroy was such a hard worker, that the superintendents wanted to keep him on site.

The Easterday Parade Logo

Leroy went from truck driver to laborer to labor foreman under Denny LaRue to Job Superintendent. The first major project placed under his control was the Saemann Building downtown in Warsaw. This was the renovation of an old building under the Historic Preservation laws in 1982 and 1984.

While on the jobs, Leroy was shortened to Roy, which is how many of us still know him. Avon Murray, an electrician that worked for ECC in the past, did this bit of editing for him. Apparently, Avon thought Leroy was too long to remember.

Leroy was born in the Chicago area on May 7th, 1941 and grew up around Culver. Margaret, Leroy’s wife was from Winamac. They were married on July 22nd, 1961. They have lived in their current residence, in the town of Culver, for the past 22 years. They have spent loads of time and energy remodeling and recently won a civic award from the Culver beautification committee. This effort is still continuing, with Leroy spending much of this summer remodeling their kitchen with new cabinets made by “Uncle Bud” Cripe.

Leroy and Margaret have two daughters, Kim and Cheryl, both in their late twenties. They have three grandchildren, Kim’s 8-year-old son, Roy Lee, Cheryl’s 6-year-old son, Mogan and 4-year-old daughter, Amy.

Solar Panel Ideas

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I’m always amazed when I see snow covered solar panels. Even some of of the ground mounted panels that are at a significant angle during the winter months often have snow clinging to them. In the case of the Culver home in the picture to the right, not only is there a reasonable angle on the panels that you would think would let the snow slide off, but you can see that the snow has melted off the rest of the roof around them. How is it staying on the black solar panels!?

So, I have a few ideas about this:

  1. Can some of the power generated be used for some minimal heat for the panels. I wouldn’t think it would take a lot to warm the surface enough that the snow doesn’t stick or that it slides off. Granted, this might require some power storage to handle that middle-of-of-the-night snow, but could it be done efficiently enough to offset the power loss from leaving them snow covered?
  2. Can the face of the panels be created with a non-stick surface like a new frying pan? Just slick it up a bit, so nothing sticks to it. That might help with dirt and debris as well. Every rain becomes a rinse cycle!
  3. Can someone come up with the equivalent of Solar Pam? Maybe Pam is the answer!? They make it for air fryers, grills, baking, etc. Maybe they need to run with this idea. “Spray your solar panels with Pam every Fall for a snow free winter!”
  4. Or do we go mechanical? The new installations have mechanisms where the panels follow the sun and in some farming applications the panels just go vertical to allow vehicle access through rows of panels. If 90 degrees isn’t enough, maybe they literally rotate to where the snow falls off. Or can we put the equivalent of a windshield wiper on them to squeegee them once or twice a day.

Someone is missing a good opportunity here. Maybe Elon is already working on this, but if he isn’t, he should be…