Targeting

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The Town of Culver (TOC) and the developer at The Dunes have mostly stated that the project is like the movie Field of Dreams. To paraphrase the movie, “If you build it, they will come.” (The original movie line is, “If you build it, he will come.”) I have no grounds to dispute that, nor to dispute TOC’s hope that adding additional housing options will lower costs in Culver. But do we have to just hope “they” are who we want?

At the last Culver Redevelopment Commission (CRC) meeting, the developer had an request before the commission, asking for the release of the next tranche of bond money to begin the next phase. Citing strong interest, they felt the need to get started on an additional 70 units. Several inciteful questions were asked by audience members that were not well addressed by the commission. One stood out to me that I wanted to address here: “Are you targeting who you want to live there?”

In a round-a-bout way, TOC has a goal that these new residents be full-time residents. There is a move to get the “Papa’s to Pinder’s” business district in shape to serve these new residents, but it’s not moving too quickly. That is definitely an important piece. As was brought up at the meeting, can Park ‘n Shop serve the additional residents? Should TOC be talking to CVS about the potential extra need and whether an onsite pharmacist would be justified again? The commission members didn’t have good answers. Hopefully, there is more going on behind the scenes that wasn’t ready for public discourse or alternatively, the discussion sparked some additional goals to strive for.

But the main thing I think is missing is targeting who TOC wants to populate those new homes. Left to their own devices, the developer has only one goal (as he should to satisfy his investors): fill the units as quickly as possible with the residents that will pay the most to be there. The project is somewhat insular by design, turning the back side of homes and apartments toward South Main Street, rather than embracing the existing neighborhoods. TOC will have to make the effort to reach out and make those residents part of the community. Wouldn’t that be easier to do if that welcoming hand were extended before they moved in?

There is a new battery plant under construction in St. Joseph County. There is a new distribution center under construction in Elkhart County. There is a new truck factory going into Kosciusko County. Driving to those sites from Culver seems like a long distance, but compared to living in a larger city, the commute time would be similar, but the drive would be more pleasant! Worst case, if commute distance is too long, those people will still be looking for housing and likely push some existing residents in those counties to look elsewhere. Culver has some nice amenities to offer, if they are promoted. Per the recent UWMC Housing Matters study, Marshall County has a housing deficit of 1,300 dwelling units.

This seems like an area where TOC should be proactive; soon, rather than taking a wait-and-see approach. If nothing is done, I believe the developer will get those homes rented. There is no strong impetus for them to care whether they are rented to full-time residents or not. If TOC does not want more part-time summer residences, part-time Culver Academies‘ parent residences and part-time overflow from lake house residents, then they will need to make an effort to attract who they want.

Memorial Day 2025

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I was on my own for Memorial Day and decided I would like to attend a remembrance ceremony. Rather than just go to any cemetery, I decided to take Murphy (our dog) and visit the site of a past project at Fletcher Cemetery near Hobart. The ceremony was short, but heartfelt. It was put on by the American Legion, including a 21 gun salute. (Murphy wasn’t too thrilled with that!)

Over the years, Easterday Construction Co., Inc. has completed a myriad of projects, but to the best of my knowledge, the work at the Fletcher Cemetery Veterans Memorial is the only cemetery project we have built. In 2014, we constructed the small memorial plaza as it exists today. Part of that project was the relocation of the existing memorial obelisk. Tom Lenker of Lenker Services was who we trusted to partner with us on that move. His skill in rigging and machine control were essential. We were all a little nervous considering this was a one-of-a-kind, historic piece of art with a lot of local history and affection.

The new Veterans Memorial was dedicated 10 years ago on Memorial Day, 2015. We got to meet some dedicated veterans as we worked through that project including Hobie Martin, father of Brent Martin, the Architect that designed the plaza. Hobie passed a few years ago and is missed.

The site still looks good. Dedication bricks have been added to the plaza over the years, but otherwise it is mostly unchanged. It was nice to revisit an old project site and remember those specific veterans we worked with there as well as all the other veterans that have passed in service of our country.

Fletcher Cemetery Veterans Memoral Plaza – Veterans Day, 2025

Water Street Townhomes Roofing

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Water Street Townhomes 4-25-25

The Water Street Townhomes project in Plymouth is moving right along. The exterior framing is complete. Most of the doors and windows have been installed, except the storefront aluminum windows and entrances for the commercial space. The roofing is underway. (You can see the materials placed on the roof in the picture to the right.) Plumbing Rough-in is underway. We’re building the interior stairs.

Mayor Listenberger gave me permission to take pictures from the Council Chambers windows, so I get the aerial photos like this one without purchasing a drone. (Though a drone purchase is on the list. Ha!)

The project has been taking a beating on Facebook! And to think I accused Culver of having the most active CAVE Society in Marshall County! I found some amusement in these comments:

  • The project is hurting downtown businesses by closing the parking lot. (We didn’t close it until after Christmas. It will be back open before next Christmas. There’s a MACOG study showing that downtown Plymouth has twice the parking needed. The parking lot will have more spaces when we’re done.)
  • The project will not be affordable. Latest, highest rent number I’ve seen in the comments is $5k per month for one of the townhomes, though others are saying it is housing for illegal immigrants and there will be multiple families in each unit. Hmmmm… “Multiple” sounds like more than two, so three families in each unit at $2,500 cash per family tops that $5k per month projection!
  • And I particularly liked this exchange between two people in the comments:
    • Person 1 – “Do we really need this!?”
    • Person 2 – “We just went through a housing study that says we need an additional 1,300 dwelling units in Marshall County.”
    • Person 1 – “Then what good will 14 units do!”
    • Person 2 – “It’s a start!”

The City administration and Common Council have been supportive of this project. I attended a Downtown Merchants’ Association meeting last year and they were also supportive. I participated in two housing studies, one by United Way of Marshall County and one by MACOG, both or which came to similar conclusions about the need for additional housing. I’m pretty confident this will be a positive addition to Plymouth.

Vancouver Complete Streets

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I accompanied Becky on a business trip to Vancouver, Washington, a few weeks back. Since I was on my own while she was in her conference, I spent a little time walking around. Several of the streets I walked on were fairly major thoroughfares. I don’t know if they were defined as “Complete Streets” there, but they met my definition, having bike lanes and spacious sidewalks. Honestly, I thought there was an excessive amount of paving, considering they had continuous paved center turn lanes between intersections, despite prohibiting driveways, and including wide sidewalks along with bike lanes which seemed redundant. It was overall a nice look though.

Vancouver, Washington, street side detention pond

One of the interesting features were areas carved out into the adjacent developments for stormwater detention. These were obviously for the streets and not the adjacent developments. While I’ve seen this done on a small scale creating curbside rain gardens (Like the one by the LaPorte Library completed in partnership with Purdue.), these were full blown detention ponds, 2′-3′ deep and capable of holding upwards of 4,000 cubic feet of water. They were landscaped as mini parks and maintained with turf and trees rather than going the route of a wetlands or marsh type look. I thought this was an interesting idea.

Vancouver, Washington, street side detention pond

These were large city blocks. It struck me that there was a missed opportunity to turn those small oases into actual mini parks. I know there is always the public safety concern about someone being caught in a storm, if someone was in them when they fulfill their design of holding water. (I was pleased that this concern wasn’t taken to the extreme where they were fenced.) Without doing anything in the basins themselves, their could have been seating around the perimeter taking advantage of the shade trees planted there. Another idea would be to create a pier type structure out into the basin with seating or even a gazebo.

The same thought could be applied locally. When detention ponds are installed in our area, they are either designed to be mowed or designed to be naturalized. In most cases, they are not considered a feature, but are designed to be functional and to fulfill a permit requirement. But could we do better?

The gazebo on a pier idea could work nearly everywhere and change a functional stormwater control requirement into a respite. Along these same lines, ponds are generally designed to maximize volume while taking up minimum space. What if they included a peninsula into the pond that could be walked on or landscaped to break-up the functional and be more naturalized? One pond that comes to mind for this is the new municipal detention pond in Plymouth across from the Neighborhood Center. What a great opportunity for the City to set an example?

If there are any civil engineers reading this, I’m sure they are cringing. They like to keep things simple and anything that affects the flow of water, creates additional calculations for them to do. That said, anything that slows the flow is a net positive. Some of these things could be incorporated around the control structure and actually make maintenance easier.

This isn’t something that could always be done. We have had projects where we have struggled to meet the detention requirements due to capacity needs vs site size. We have also had deep and steep ponds due to various factors that are not conducive to bringing the public to them. But there’s no reason that other options shouldn’t be considered when possible. Detention ponds don’t have to be purely function and aesthetic eyesores…

Taking One Thing Off the Plate…

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In 2017, when I was serving on the Culver Stellar Committee, I volunteered to set up a Twitter, now X, account to promote Culver and the Stellar activities. Through that, I connected to Madison, Indiana, our sister Stellar Award winner, and many of the State agencies with which we were working. It was something I thought was important at the time, and I was happy to help promote Culver. Since that time, I have put up posts with pictures and reports about Town meetings, sent out promotional things and reposted many of the event announcements that appeared on Town, Gown and Lake. Most of what I see says that marketing should be multifaceted and you should meet your audience where they are. I assume some of them are on X. It wasn’t too onerous, but did take time converting PDFs to JPGs and editing things to the 140 character format. I included some humor here and there, but avoided anything I thought would be controversial.

Apparently I was wrong… Last week the Town said they had received complaints about it being too political. I’m not sure if that’s just because of the Elon controversy and the fact that it is X or if there was something else. (Maybe someone was upset about me reposting Notre Dame Women’s Basketball posts?) They couldn’t tell me what the issue was as this was decided without looking at the site, so it will remain one of life’s mysteries. I have at time posted or reposted things from elected officials, but never from candidates. In any case, I was asked to take the references to the Town off the feed or shut it down. 1) I was doing this as an promotion for the Town and if they don’t want that, I just won’t do it. (Thus this post’s title.) and 2) It’s not worth my time to figure out either of those things, so I made one last post and I’m letting it sit idle.

I’m choosing, mostly, to take this as a time saver for me. I do think it was a positive for Culver or I wouldn’t have continued it. Out of curiosity, I went back and looked and the site had 327 followers, including: News/Talk 95.3 MNC, Michiana Life, Pulaski County Community Foundation, Startup South Bend, INDOT Northwest, The Ron Rubin School for the Entrepreneur, Marshall County LLN, Swan Lake Resort, Anita Goodan (reporter), Purdue Center for Regional Development, Leadership Marshall County, Madison Main Street Program, Argos Hardware, Visit Marshall County, Marshall County Blueberry Festival, Summer Horan ABC57, The Pilot News, The Lakes Magazine, Patronicity, Indiana Philanthropy Alliance, Indiana Bond Bank, Jeff Rea (South Bend Chamber, South Bend Tribune, Economic Outlook), Indiana Office of Community and Rural Affairs (OCRA), South Bend Elkhart Regional Partnership, US Fish and Wildlife, Hoosier State Chronicles, Suzanne Crouch (former Lt. Gov.), Launch Indy, Max 98.3, Visit Indiana, Marian University, Inside INdiana Business, Indiana Economic Development Corp. (IEDC), AIM, Marshall County EDC and that’s every entity and none of the people. Many of those sites are from outside Culver, so they were seeing Lions Club Pancake Breakfasts, Lakefest calendars, and other events they might not have otherwise seen. Honestly, I don’t know if those are all still active sites, but they were at one time when they chose to connect to Culver. And maybe having that many followers is the problem, since I’ve been so political and controversial! Ha!

Most people don’t know that I was behind the @CulverISstellar site and I mostly took pains to keep it that way. I was doing this as something to give back to the Town. I feel it was an asset to the Town or I wouldn’t have been doing it. As is typical with social media these days, apparently someone couldn’t just scroll on. If there had been a negative comment with someone questioning a post, I would have just taken it down. I hope it was not just at Town control issue, because that would be even more sad. I made 6,547 posts over the last 8 years. With X, it’s hard to tell who is looking unless you’re controversial. I wasn’t.

In any case, this is another end of an era for me. Such is life.