This is a bit of a mini rant today. I’m not sure who it is directed at, but I’m disappointed with the Culver Redevelopment Commission (CRC) and the Marshall County Economic Development Corporation (MCEDC). And probably others for not making things happen and holding MCEDC accountable. For a bit of context for those that don’t know, I was one of the original board members that started MCEDC. For that reason, I feel like its creation is a bit of a legacy thing for me. That’s why I feel bad seeing it in decline over the last several years.
I was pleased when the CRC added funds to support MCEDC a few years back, though I was never a fan of the laundry list approach, where the CRC dictated a list of things that must be done in order to receive those funds. In my opinion it would be better to keep MCEDC nimble and able to address the most pressing needs across the county rather than be encumbered by enumerated requirements. (How this began is understandable, as it was the result of the former MCEDC director’s broken promises.)
This year the MCEDC director met with the CRC to discuss the contract early in the first quarter of the year. An initial conversation was had regarding what should be included with MCEDC to come back with a contract. This never happened.
This is poor performance on the part of MCEDC. An inexcusable and disrespectful performance. But unfortunately, it appears that CRC is looking at this as a cost savings, rather than a lost opportunity. While I didn’t like the way the contract was written, it did provide MCEDC with funds and Culver with MCEDC’s attention.
I’m concerned with MCEDC’s poor performance. I have seen this played out in other communities; not just Culver. I hope the MCEDC board is able to turn this around. MCEDC has been an asset to Marshall County and the communities within it. It is important that it becomes that asset again.
Marshall County Crossroads is coordinating a ground breaking ceremony for Riverside Commons apartments in Plymouth tomorrow, November 2, 2021 at 10:30am. The ceremony will be at the site at the corner of Baker Street and Richter Road on the east side of Plymouth. Marty Oosterbahn will speak for Marshall County Crossroads. Mayor Senter will speak for the City of Plymouth and Kevin L. Berger will speak for Culver Sand Hill Farm LLC and Easterday Construction Co., Inc.
We’re hoping for a good event to kick this project off. This is just for the Plymouth portion of the project which consists of 40 units. We will have a separate ground breaking ceremony next Spring for the second part of this development, consisting of an additional 8 units in LaPaz.
Actual construction should begin quickly with erosion control and earthwork. The first units should be open within 18 months.
Easterday Construction lost another friend earlier this month. Hobart (Hobie) Martin passed away September 5th. You can read his (Impressive!) obituary here.
We met Hobie through is connection to the Veterans Memorial at Fletcher Cemetery. That connection was through his son, Architect Brent Martin, who we have worked with extensively on many projects. When I first met him, I said, “It’s nice to meet you Mr. Martin.”, to which he replied, “If we’re going to work together we should be friends. Call me Hobie!” I definitely enjoyed our time working together.
In 2014 we were contracted to move the existing memorial stone to a new location on a plaza created for it. The stone has the names of veterans carved into it and sadly was running out of space. You can find several posts about working on this project here.
Bob Cooper (ECC) and Tom Lenker placing the monument stone
Knowing this historic significance of the piece made the project a bit daunting. We ended up working with Tom Lenker to make this move as he was always one of the equipment operators I trusted most. (When someone would ask about him, I told them I would trust him to scratch an itch on my right shoulder blade with an excavator tooth without a second thought.)
While I didn’t see Hobie often after that project, I did keep track of him through Brent. He lived a long and good life and in the end, was able to pass in his home with his family there.
Memorial Day services at the new monument plaza, 2015.
The project goal was to have the project complete by Memorial Day. Several of us from Easterday Construction attended the dedication service and the Memorial Day Service that year. I stopped to check on it when I went to Hobie’s visitation and the plaza is a great tribute to his community service.
For the last couple of years, I’ve been trying to get Culver to consider a Comprehensive Plan update. There are a few reasons for this:
It’s just good practice. Most of the time it is recommended that a town’s comprehensive plan is reviewed and updated every five years with a new one completed every ten to fifteen years. Culver’s current comp plan was completed in 2014. I really thought we should have done this in 2020 since we could have called it Culver’s 20/20 vision, but last year was, um, challenging, to say the least. I bet there would have been good Zoom participation just out of boredom though!
Stellar… The two Stellar Strategic Action Plans that brought us Stellar designation used the 2014 comp plan as a jumping off point. (As they should have.) For that reason, most of the readily achievable goals and even a few aspirational goals have been met or at least advanced. No sense sitting our our laurels. What are the next things we need to achieve?
Future grants will require an updated comprehensive plan. The Stellar program required a comp plan no more than five years old. Other grant opportunities may hinge on that as well. If that’s the case, a comp plan can’t be updated overnight.
Our community has changed physically. We’ve added the housing at Sand Hill Farm. There are 72 new residences there since the last comp plan and many of those are new faces in Culver. The Maple Ridge housing was not here in 2014. More than a few infill lots have seen homes constructed, while we have lost the trailer park, the City Tavern building, the Evil Czech building and the Boetsma property has been partially destroyed by fire. We have annexed new property on the northwest side of town. We have accepted the East Shore Sewer Corporation into Culver’s wastewater system.
Our Community leadership has changed. Ginny Munroe has stepped down from the Town Council. Her leadership in spearheading the Stellar effort was invaluable. Tammy Shaffer stepped out of town leadership after being an important part of the Town Council and Redevelopment Commission. Pete Peterson, a long time Plan Commission stalwart has retired and sadly, some community leaders like Ralph Winters have passed away… New people have stepped up to replace them and their voices need to be represented in a new comp plan.
Building Commissioner Chuck DeWitt has asked the Plan Commission to start a monthly review of the Comprehensive Plan in advance of an update or new plan. The Plan Commission will take up a couple of chapters a month. As always, the Plan Commission and Board of Zoning Appeals are seeing new challenges to the Zoning Ordinance, which is based on the goals and aspirations of the Comprehensive Plan. We have new types of development occurring, such as the RV storage facilities planned at the end of Main Street, which will involve another annexation. These things need to be addressed in the comp plan.
Some things on my agenda?
I was disappointed that Culver didn’t work harder to obtain our allowed 2 mile extraterritorial boundary. We were already sorely below the allowable area, but since the last comp plan, we have annexed land to the north and west and we’re about to annex land to the south. There has been no expansion of our extraterritorial boundary with this growth.
Since I served on the previous Comprehensive Plan Committee, I have become more in tune to housing and housing needs. The video below is an example of how we could adjust our zoning requirements to allow new and different affordable housing. Should we be a bit more progressive, consider new urbanism and other non-traditional zoning options?
Little was done to advance zoning changes to reflect the land use planning included in the last comp plan. We need to be more proactive.
More education is needed on the use of the comp plan. (Part of this is due to the change over talked about above, so there are new people involved.) The Plan Commission has done better with it’s referencing of the comp plan, but it is still not regularly referred to by the Town Council when decisions are being made regarding infrastructure. It is still too common to see projects that address today’s needs without addressing future potential. The sewer lines at Sand Hill Farm were not extended nor at the correct depth for future growth in the area. Can we do better with the annexation and infrastructure extensions we’re getting ready to do to the south? When the (now defunct) PUD was created for housing on the west side, the comp plan’s goal of extending Academy Road to S.R. 17 was ignored. (The developer should have been required to plan for it on his property and Culver could have worked on the remaining pieces needed as development progressed in the future.)
I was pleased to hear that the Plan Commission is starting the discussion. A revised comp plan will lead to a zoning ordinance update, a new strategic plan and hopefully a new list of accomplishments for Culver to start working on. Jim Dicke once told me, “Towns are growing or dying. There is no way to remain the same.” Culver is on a growth trajectory. We need to keep that going!
Last Thursday evening Becky and I were pleased to be invited to attend the ceremonial dinner where Ginny Munroe was awarded the LaSalle Council of the Boy Scouts of America Soaring Eagle Award. This award is given to individuals who have been successful in their field of endeavor and have demonstrated integrity, a record of volunteer leadership, and service to youth and their community. Soaring Eagle Award honorees are people who have been unselfish in their service to others on an individual and community basis. They seek no return for their service, other than satisfaction of aiding their fellow citizens, their community and their nation. Ginny definitely deserves the recognition for what she’s done for Culver and recently extended to Marshall County.
Ginny and I didn’t really know each other before she joined the Culver Town Council, but since that time we have counseled each other and collaborated on things. We have a mutual respect that has only become more important to me as it has grown. I have continued to tell her that she is leaving a legacy in Culver for which she can be proud. And as is her way, she demures from that.
From her first term on the Town Council, Ginny was motivated to make things happen. She wanted to move the town forward; often fighting the opposition that wanted things to stay the same. I related to her more than once what Jim Dicke had told the Culver Chamber of Commerce years ago; to paraphrase, “Towns are either growing are dying. They cannot stay the same.” Ginny embodied that push for growth. She quickly formulated a plan that included early infrastructure improvements that prepared Culver for other moves forward. When I was pushing the Plan Commission to do a new Comprehensive Plan, she quickly grasped the value and made it the next priority. Then unlike most community leaders, she took that plan, held additional meetings and created a Strategic Action Plan to implement the things the Comp Plan recommended. Most communities let their Comp Plan sit on a shelf, unused and seldom referenced. Ginny has made Culver’s Comp Plan obsolete by completing a majority of the action items and making progress on many of the aspirational items as well.
One of her initiatives that I’m most familiar with was the formation of committee that came to be known as the Entry-Level Housing Committee. For decades, affordable housing has been a problem in Culver and it has only gotten worse. The Comp Plan noted this as a recognized need. Businesses can’t find help and full-time residents are being priced out of the market. I joined that committee as a contractor, with interests in construction, but due to Ginny’s energy and the lack of others stepping up, she motivated me to become a developer! As a step forward in this, MCEDC arranged for me to meet with Bill Konyha, then head of the Indiana Office of Community Development and Rural Affairs (OCRA). He suggested that Culver pursue the recently created small community competition for Stellar designation. When we brought this back to Ginny, she seized it as a great way to move Culver forward, not just in the initial goal of affordable housing, but for community wide improvements. I believe that Culver’s loss in their attempt to win Stellar in 2016 was as much due to politics as anything else, but despite some initial hesitancy, Ginny recommitted Culver to achieving Stellar Designation in 2017. And while working on resubmittals, she moved the Town forward on two of the 2016 projects, the Damore Amphitheatre and the Sand Hill Farm Apartments. I believe that demonstration of “working the plan” made a difference in Culver’s competitiveness and and success in achieving Stellar Designation in 2017.
Marshall County Stellar was a different challenge. OCRA asked Ginny to step up for this because of Culver’s success. She did this while in the middle of a half dozen Culver Stellar projects. Despite the advances made by County Development for the Future, there was still a competitiveness between the communities in Marshall County that didn’t always allow collaboration. Too often, individuals tried to take control or take credit or conversely work against others, rather than letting group collaboration work as it should. Ginny was able to see the problems that caused the first loss and massage the group into a successful second attempt. It was extremely disheartening at the Marshall County Stellarbration when Ginny’s contributions (as well as others) were misappropriated to undeserving individuals. Obviously Marshall County still has issues to overcome.
When Ginny was considering the move to Culver Town Manager, she asked for my thoughts. I was mixed on this. I was concerned that the Town Council would suffer without her leadership and I wasn’t sure that she would be as effective leading from behind. I was also concerned for Ginny, who I consider a natural leader, not being able to lead. So far, my concerns have been mostly unfounded and Ginny has continued to help move Culver forward. Again, she is adding to her Culver Legacy. The Soaring Eagle award is much deserved…
