Great to see that Marshall County Economic Development Corporation (MCEDC) is back on track with Annual Reports. (And not just because of my teeny-tiny picture on the cover! Ha!) Riverside Commons actually has two references in the report, though not by name.
The lack of an Annual Report was one of the major issues in my last couple of years on the board. It got contentious with that director fabricating a false schedule for producing a report that never happened. Then it was apparently just completely disregarded by the next director. I’m glad to see that the new leadership under Greg Hildebrand includes living up to commitments, the Annual Report being one of these.
I don’t know how Greg is doing on the State and National levels, but on the local level, it’s been refreshing to have a MCEDC President that is not constantly burning bridges, MIA or joked about due to the inability to contact them or find them in the office. He also doesn’t take his title too seriously. IYKYK This will go a long way to improving MCEDC’s image and returning it to the mission it had when it was founded.
I hope we will be seeing quarterly newsletters again too. The organization has to be seen and seen as productive in order to continue to move the county forward. Even at its low points, I felt it was positive for Marshall County to have MCEDC. Good luck to Greg as he strives to make it an organization of which we can be proud once again.
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.
Image from MCEDC website
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.
CabinetWorks Billboard on 31 South
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.)
Image from CabinetWorks Group Website
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?
LaPaz Commons is the LaPaz component of the Riverside Commons IHCDALIHTC project we are currently constructing. The eight units in LaPaz were always slated to be the last to come under construction. In the last week, site work has begun in preparation for building construction this Fall.
LaPaz has a effluent sewer system, where each residence or business has a septic tank associated with their sewer line. Only the liquid effluent from the septic tank enters the municipal lines and is ferried on for treatment. Most of the LaPaz system is gravity collection, but then the final leg pumps it to the Bremen sewer plan for treatment.
Green Sewer Pipes mark where the building hook-ups will be made.
As part of this project, the Town of LaPaz will be improving Troyer Street. We wanted to get the sewer taps in place prior to the street improvements, so as not to disturb the new street construction. If you look closely, you can see the green sewer pipes stubbed up showing where the connections are ready to hook-up to the new townhouses. The taps are complete, the septic tanks are set and we’re ready to roll!
Thomas Excavating has done this work and you can see where they also have the building pad prepared. Hundt Concrete will begin excavation on footings and frostwalls here as soon as they complete the last two buildings in Plymouth. We’re pushing on this to get everything out of the ground before winter. We hope to get paving placed as well. That would make the site much more navigable this winter. We’re hoping the Farmer’s Almanac is wrong, but best to prepare for the worst!
Last Summer the South Bend Elkhart Regional Partnership (SBERP), of which Marshall County is a part, announced their intention to go after READI grant dollars in much the same way they did with the Regional Cities Initiative a few years ago. Culver Sand Hill Farm was asked to participate as the developer for a project in Plymouth. Easterday Construction Co., Inc. would serve as General Contractor. This project was a small (13 unit) townhouse project on Water Street in Plymouth.
The READI program is being administered through the Indiana Economic Development Corporation and is modeled after the successful Regional Cities Initiative. The funding is designed to leverage State funds in order to bring in private funding on projects the region’s municipalities want to see move forward. It offers up to 20% READI dollars as a match against a minimum participation of 20% municipal participation and 60% private investment. This makes it difficult for larger public projects like parks, trails and social programs to move forward, where there would be no return on the private investment, but provides a great opportunity to meet other goals.
Water Street Townhomes
We were pleased that the City of Plymouth wanted to work with us on this and were happy to help, as it fit with Culver Sand Hill Farm’s continued housing efforts. While not a LIHTC project, such as The Paddocks and Riverside Commons, it was an effort to bring additional workforce housing to downtown Plymouth. This adds to Plymouth’s downtown revitalization and it would be within a block of River Park Square, the newly renovated Rees Theater, Wild Rose Moon and adjacent to downtown businesses. Thank you to Mayor Mark Senter and City Attorney, Sean Surrisi, for their vision and help moving this forward! I approached the Town of Culver to see if they wanted to do something similar. I was told that a straw pole of council members indicated there was interest and they would support our application. This came “last minute” and we spent most of a weekend putting an application together, so that Culver could benefit as well.
Water Street Townhomes Site Plan
South Bend Elkhart Regional Partnership was successful in their bid, securing $50 Million dollars for the Region. That was great news. There’s been some confusion about how this would proceed, but both projects were included in the application, so were thought to be secure. There was back and forth at SBERP on whether other projects not in the original application could be considered. In the end, it was decided they would be considered, so that opened other opportunities. It’s still unclear whether projects in the initial application will be given more weight in considerations.
Plymouth E-Hub Interior
In Plymouth, Culver Sand Hill Farm has worked with the city to put together another application for an E-Hub. This is envisioned to be an entrepreneur incubator with spaces available to encourage new business starts. This project has been on Plymouth’s radar for years and this appeared to be a perfect opportunity to move it forward. This is an exciting opportunity for the city and should be a benefit to Marshall County as a whole.
In Culver, there has been a lot of false starts and back & forth on READI. Culver Sand Hill Farm continued to support the idea presented in the original application, while making some changes to make it better. As Culver’s partner in the Stellar applications, we were ready to step up and help again. We were the only ones from Culver to attend the mandatory information meeting in Argos and were encouraged by SBERP representatives to proceed.
Culver Crossroads created a READI subcommittee, only to disband it when Culver decided not to participate in READI. (We also discussed the possibility of an E-Hub project with Culver, but the committee had different goals in mind and we couldn’t arrive at a viable project.) In the last few weeks, Culver reversed course and decided to submit a housing project application with another, out-of-town, developer rather than proceed with us. Things happen. While disappointing, pushing it without support would be foolish.
Another partner in all these applications has been Brent Martin of SRKM Architecture. He provided the graphics included here and have helped advocate for these projects. Brent has been helpful in articulating a vision for the sites we’re considering.
We’re looking forward to helping Plymouth in their efforts. We should find out if our applications were successful sometime this Fall, making these 2023-2024 projects. Wish us and the City of Plymouth luck!
This is a continuation of my thoughts on the 7/19/22 Plan Commission Meeting. You can find the previous posts here and here. This one is more of a whiny rant, so if you’re not up to hearing me complain, it would be best to skip this post!
412 Lake Shore Drive
I own the property at 412 Lake Shore Drive. It is a postage stamp size parcel with a 100 year old kit home on it. The lot would be unbuildable by current standards. According to the Accessor, the lot is 38′ x 120′. There is an alley down one side which makes it a corner lot. 38′ minus 10′ Side Yard Setback, minus 25′ ROW Setback leaves 3′ buildable without some extreme variances. The home also sits well into the 25′ front setback.
Do you know how our lives are divided into pre-pandemic and post-pandemic now? Sometime pre-pandemic (2020), the adjacent property owner at 404 Lake Shore Drive built a fence on the property line. Before I even noticed it, then Plan Commission member, Marty Oosterbaan, pointed out that it was not built per standards. Chapter 6, Section 070, B.1. – Within the limits of a required front yard setback area, no fence shall exceed 5 feet in height and shall have a minimum of 50% of its surface open to permit visibility. The fence as constructed extends into the front yard setback area, thus in that area it is too high and does not provide 50% visibility. The Plan Commission directed Chuck DeWitt, then Building Inspector, to pursue a remedy.
Multiple things happened: 1) Covid and the associated lack of public meetings for the Plan Commission; 2) Mr. DeWitt left his position as Marshall County Building Inspector and took a job as Building Commissioner for Culver; 3) The property changed ownership; 4) Ginny Munroe replaced Jonathan Leist at Culver Town Manager; 5) Marty Oosterbaan stepped down from the Plan Commission (and there were other member changes as well.) Throughout this, I continued to bring this up to the Plan Commission every month or so. At one point, I even drafted a letter for their use citing the violations. When the property was on the market, the Plan Commission directed Mr. DeWitt to let the realtor know about the violation in hopes that it would get corrected as part of a sale. While there was an open building permit on the property, the Plan Commission requested that the Marshall County Building Department not provide a Certificate of Occupancy until the violation was corrected.
412 Lake Shore Drive
At the meeting on the 19th, a status report on this issue was requested by the Plan Commission President. Mr. DeWitt reported that he had inquired about this with the Town’s Attorney handling Plan Commission matters and was told there was no grounds for enforcing this issue. This was a shock to me as well as some of the commissioners!
And here’s the Rant… I’m not the guy that comes in and raises a stink at meetings. I have a lot of respect for volunteers and what they do for the community. I don’t call them out or try and embarrass them in public meetings. But this is part of a string of promises from the Town, that I have waited patiently on, that have not borne results. This happened with Sand Hill Farm Apartments, The Paddocks and most recently the READI Grant applications. I have trusted in the process and been disappointed again and again. While I don’t volunteer with the expectation of returns, it’s frustrating to lose property value and business opportunities to others who have contributed little or nothing to the community. I’ve always been optimistic, but pragmatic. My optimism is waning lately… and my pragmatism is transitioning to cynicism…
