Culver

Sand Hill Farm Ground Breaking Ceremony

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From Left to Right, Bob Porter – Culver Utilities Superintendent, Jack Jordan – State Representative, Dale Cramer – Lake City Bank, Joel Samuelson – Culver Town Council, Kevin Berger – Easterday Construction Co., Inc., Tammy Shaffer – Culver Town Council, Ginny Munroe – Culver Town Council President.

I was pretty impressed with the turn out for the Sand Hill Farm Ground Breaking Ceremony last Tuesday, November 5th. There were around 35 people there including representatives from the Town, County and State. Town Council President – Ginny Munroe, County Commissioner – Kevin Overmyer and Lake City Bank Representative – Dale Cramer all spoke in support of the project. I truly appreciated the kudos. We broke out the gold shovels and made a showing of it for the Press.

Speaking about Workforce Housing at the Stellarbration on November 5th. From Left to Right, Kevin Berger – Easterday Construction Co., Inc., Brian Meek – Elkay Wood Products, Karen Shuman – Culver Community School Corp., Don Fox – Culver Academies

The theme from everyone was how this was a first step towards addressing Culver and Marshall County’s workforce housing needs. Currently, Marshall County has an unemployment rate of less than 3%. The general “rule” is that once it gets below 4%, everyone that wants to work is working. Since there are still jobs going unfilled, the next step would be to recruit labor from outside the County. That’s difficult when there isn’t housing available for those new workers. Sand Hill Farm hopes to be a first step towards addressing this. This is Easterday Construction being a community partner/leader.

Along with the several of our area newspapers, we received coverage from the three major networks, ABC 57, WNDU 16 and WSBT 22. See WSBT links for video clips of the Stellerbration event and ABC 57 and WNDU 16 for a little more about the Sand Hill Farm ground breaking. They were all kind with their video editing and made us look good!

Housing was the signature piece of Culver’s Stellar Communities application and I truly think we wouldn’t have scored as highly without the Phase I portion of this project underway. It showed that even without winning Stellar designation last year, Culver moved forward, addressing the needs identified in our Strategic Investment Plan. Having Regional Cities also put money towards this project was positive too. It showed a regional commitment that the State values. At several of the presentations, I was pleased to stand with Culver’s three largest employers, Elkay Wood Products, Culver Community School Corporation and Culver Academies, as their representatives spoke about the needs this project was addressing and how this needs to be just the start.

Excavation underway at Sand Hill Farm. Some of the hill is going into the building pad.

Tuesday was a true ground breaking as we made our presentations with an excavator working in the background. Currently the building pad is nearly complete and the excavator should be cutting in footings in the next week. the site looks quite different.

We’re racing the weather to get the slab done so we can work through the winter. Since it is slab-on-grade construction, that means a fair amount of underground utility work needs to be completed as well. Cross your fingers for us!

It sounds like the Town will delay their street work until Spring. That shouldn’t affect us as long as they are complete sometime in June. The goal is to be open next summer before the new school year starts. That would meet many of our goals, i.e. increased Town population, increased school enrollment and an expanded labor pool.

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Thanks to Nancy Tyree at MCEDC for the pictures.

 

Sand Hill Farm Ground Breaking Ceremony

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The Town of Culver and their Workforce Housing Committee have been working on solutions to workforce housing for the past three years. Housing was the centerpiece of our Stellar Communities plan the last two years. As the culmination of this hard work, Easterday Construction Co., Inc. and the Town of Culver are excited to announce the ground breaking ceremony for the Sand Hill Farm Apartments on November 8th at 3:00pm. The ground breaking will be at the site, 540 West Jefferson Street, in Culver.

Sand Hill Farm apartments will have a mix of one, two and three bedroom apartments totaling 24 units. The development is geared towards the goals of increasing housing opportunities, attracting new families, increasing population and increasing school enrollment.

This will be a great kick-off to our Stellarbration at the beach lodge immediately after this. Hopefully you have that event on your calendar as well.

Thank you to all that helped make this possible! We hope you can take the time to help us kick the project off right.

Relay for Life – 17

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The article to the right appeared in the November 3rd issue of the Culver Citizen. Everyone here at Easterday Construction Co., Inc. is proud of our part in making this possible. Several of us walked at the event in memory of Kathy Pearson, a dear friend and co-worker, who was taken by breast cancer. Thank you to Julie Heise for organizing our group. She brought her whole family out for the event. Thanks to Scott & Connie Bennett for their help as well.

Congratulations to the organizers for winning the national award. Just from the effort it took to get a team together, we understand the phenomenal effort it took to put the event together. From the band to the food to the organization of the  event, we were impressed with it all. Great Job!

Culver Achieved Stellar Designation!

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OCRA

October 18, 2017

Lt. Governor Crouch Announces the 2017 Stellar Communities Designees

INDIANAPOLIS –  Lt. Governor Suzanne Crouch announced today that the City of Madison and the Town of Culver are the 2017 Designees of the Stellar Communities Designation Program (SCDP).

Between May and October, representatives from the SCDP State Team visited all six finalist communities where they heard highlights from each local team as well as toured project locations from their local Strategic Investment Plans (SIP).

“The hard work, dedication, and passion the six finalist communities demonstrated throughout this process was clearly seen firsthand by the Stellar team during the site visits.” said Lt. Governor Crouch. “Each community demonstrated their capacity to strengthen local and regional partnerships in reaching transformative outcomes in their respective communities.”

Launched in 2011, the SCDP is a multi-agency partnership designed to recognize Indiana’s smaller communities that have identified comprehensive community and economic development projects and activities as well as next steps and key partnerships. The designations are separated into two divisions based on population size. Division I are communities of a population of 6,000 or more and Division II are smaller cities and towns with populations of fewer than 6,000.

Division I Designee –
City of Madison
Madison’s SIP includes the Madison Connector, a bike and pedestrian trail connecting Madison destinations; adaptive re-use of historic buildings; creation of a mixed-use facility in a former cotton mill; improvement of a riverfront park; overhauling the community gateways and neighborhood revitalization.

Division II Designee –  
Town of Culver
Culver’s SIP focuses on creating workforce housing with the Sand Hill Farm Development, expanding the Lake Maxinkuckee bike and pedestrian trail, renovating the local landmark Beach Lodge, and improving the western gateway into Culver to create an appealing multi-modal corridor into the town.

Seven communities submitted letters of interest (LOIs) for the 2017 Stellar Communities Designation Program. Of those seven, six communities were chosen as finalists, received planning grants and were required to submit local Strategic Investment Plans. The SIPs detail the projects, partnerships and proposed sources of funding based on feedback and input from the local community. The next step was the site visits which were conducted by the Stellar Team, comprised of staff representing the partnering agencies.

On October 25th, a Stellarbration hosted by Lt. Governor Crouch, will be held at the Indiana Statehouse to celebrate the 2017 Designees. The event will include presentations from Madison and Culver.

The Lt. Governor and state team members will also travel to Madison and Culver later this fall to participate in local Stellarbrations with the local community members.

The SCDP State Team is comprised of the following agencies:

Funding for the SCDP comes from multiple existing federal programs. Both communities have proposed projects involving public and private dollars; although they have been designated as a Stellar Community, the projects are proposals and no specific funds are guaranteed. Both communities will meet with representatives from the state Stellar Team in the coming weeks to discuss details of the proposed projects including feasibility, available funding, timeframes and partner participation.

The finalist communities will receive follow up from the state team to discuss details about their submitted SIPs and provide feedback on the SCDP process.

Eligible applicants must be a Local Unit of Government which includes a city or an incorporated town not entitled to direct Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) funding through the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Click here for more information about the SCDP.