“The words of a President have an enormous weight and ought not to be used indiscriminately.” – Calvin Coolidge
“Salient advice that several recent Presidents should have taken to heart.” – Kevin Berger’s commentary
Personal
Clip Wamsley
Claiborn M. “Clip” Wamsley has been a friend of Easterday Construction Co., Inc. for decades. We’re all saddened by his passing. We feel for all our friends at First National Bank of Monterey as they work through this loss.
Clip was an iconic character in our region, through his work in our communities, community organizations and schools. His story of working his way up from a teller to bank president is one of those inspirational tales that is hard to believe, but stands as a testament of what hard work, perseverance and loyalty can bring. He led the bank through much of their first 100 years and was there to celebrate their century mark in 2010.
Easterday Construction Co., Inc.’s ties to Clip and the First National Bank of Monterey (FNBM) have resulted in multiple collaborations. We built the Culver branch of FNBM as a new building when they expanded to Culver. When FNBM expanded to Winamac, we built an addition to that building. We completed an annex addition to the FNBM home office in Monterey and reworked the roof of the FNBM North Judson facility giving it an entirely new look. We have completed much of their maintenance and improvement work along the way.
We’re saddened by his passing and wish his wife, Alice, and the rest of his family peace and comfort.
NYE: 2019
Happy New Year from everyone at Easterday Construction Co., Inc.! As with most years, 2018 was full of wins & losses, successes & frustrations, progress and stagnation.
Our biggest project of 2018 was Sand Hill Farm apartments. Starting out as a bright spot in our participation in Culver’s Stellar program, it has been plagued by delays, affected by internal and external forces. Despite that, I’m pleased with the way it is shaping up and I’m proud that we can take this step towards relieving Culver’s housing crunch and at the same time bring new families to the community. All in all, we should be able to point to it as a success when this 24 unit apartment building opens in early 2019.
We also completed work on the Damore Amphitheater at the Culver Town Park. This was a project originally on the Town of Culver’s 2017 Stellar application that they were able to accelerate with the help of Patronicity. This project was completed in late Spring.
2019 also saw several projects at the Culver Community Schools. We completed a new entrance and vestibule moving the main entrance for the Middle and High School to the west side of the media center which will now serve as the new offices. This moves the offices to a more central location in the school. A second project saw renovations to the main restrooms, updating and modernizing them. The institutional block wall finish that served the rooms since the 60’s were updated with a decorative tile wainscot, with drywall above that. New toilet fixtures, toilet partitions, lights and acoustical ceiling tile all helped bring a modern look to the facilities.
A milestone event this year was accepting the State of Indiana’s Half Century Award. As near as we can determine, Easterday Construction is actually around 90 years old, but who knows if the award will still be given 10 years from now? Better to accept the half century now. I can tell you that Governor Holcomb and IEDC did a nice job with the event, making all of the attendees feel suitably honored. I want to thank my niece Nikole again for being my escort and personal photographer.
So it looks like I’ve been mainly positive here, so it’s probably a good time to close this before I find something negative. All and all it’s been a good year. I hope it has been the same for all of our friends and clients. Once again, best wishes for a Happy, Healthy, Prosperous New Year!
Gambrinous
Ran across a word I didn’t know today, but one I look forward to using over the Holidays. Gambrinous – Per the Urban Dictionary: To be content and happy due to a stomach full of beer.
Found it elsewhere as just “Full of Beer”, but I like the Urban Dictionary definition above better!
Suburban Sprawl in Culver?
Wikipedia defines Suburban Sprawl thus: “Urban sprawl or suburban sprawl describes the expansion of human populations away from central urban areas into low-density, monofunctional and usually car-dependent communities, in a process called suburbanization.” While Culver isn’t exactly racing down the road to strip malls, it’s worth looking at the changes occuring in recent and proposed developments in Culver.
Culver’s early development was very traditional. Despite dealing with the curvature of Lake Maxinkuckee, a traditional grid system was used for both the commercial and residential areas with the section of Lake Shore Drive along the Park being one of the few deviations with some curvature to reflect the lake shore. Since that time, the newer subdivisions have not followed the grid. The Riggings, Maple Ridge and Edgewood Estates are all dead end or loop streets with no plans to tie into the grid. It’s a little cheesy, but Adam Conover of “Adam Explains Everything” does a quick run down of some of the issues here:
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