Tag:Culver
Habitat For Humanity at Sand Hill Farm
Image from Habitat for Humanity of Marshall County website
I have always had a plan to include a Habitat for Humanity site at Sand Hill Farm. I recently met with representatives of Habitat for Humanity of Marshall County and the Town of Culver to discuss this. They were excited about the opportunity and were happy to provide additional information.
If you’re interested in possibly participating in a Habitat Home at Sand Hill Farm, I encourage you to look at the information on their site and fill out an application. Copies of the application can be found on their website here and can be picked up at the Town Hall in Culver. The plan would be to offer a home in late 2018 or sometime in 2019. Once accepted, an applicant must put in 100 hours of service before the build starts, so the sooner you start the process, the better.
Habitat for Humanity is always looking for volunteers, so if you would like to volunteer you can check out those opportunities on their website here. If you would like to contribute, they accept donations directly at: 116 South Walnut Street, Plymouth, IN and for convenience, you can also contribute to them through Marshall County Community Foundation where they have an established fund. The Community Foundation site accepts credit card donations.
Regional Cities Initiative Helping
To the right is an article that appeared in The Pilot News, December 18, 2017 discussing the impact of the Regional Cities Initiative. The study was conducted by Ball State University and concluded that it is making a noticeable difference in attracting talented young workers to the area.
Marshall County is part of the North Central Region along with St. Joseph and Elkhart Counties. Most of the funds for our region have been allocated and in Marshall County we’re seeing the impact through assistance in worker housing, manufacturing centers, expanded Boys & Girls Club facilities and an Aquatic Center. In Culver alone, the initiative has helped the Town provide infrastructure to Sand Hill Farm for entry-level housing and money has been set aside for assistance with an E-Commerce center which may provide entrepreneurial opportunities and worker training space. (Culver was in line for additional RCI grants, but the 60% private equity requirement proved daunting for a small community to achieve.)
It’s important to recognize what our local organizations have done to achieve these goals. Marshall County would not have had this opportunity without the foresight of the Marshall County Community Foundation (MCCF) and their initial investment of $10k into the program. That seed money was what put us on the map for this and made the initial connections to St. Joseph and Elkhart Counties. If Linda Yoder hadn’t taking this to the MCCF board and sold it, it wouldn’t have happened.
The hand-off from there went to Marshall County Economic Development Corporation (MCEDC). Without their efforts, many of the projects submitted by Marshall County would not have made the list before the application was submitted. Then the follow up to keep the dollars allocated to Marshall County stayed with Marshall County largely came down to the shepherding of Jerry Chavez and MCEDC. They were able to get a reallocation of funds to housing initiatives when original projects fell through and then when one of the four housing projects didn’t come to fruition, they were able to secure the money towards the other projects that were viable.
The money that went to the housing project in Culver helped Culver achieve Stellar Community designation this year. It’s a domino effect and currently the dominos are falling in our direction. This was former Governor Mike Pence’s vision when he spearheaded this program. Inject funds into regions that demonstrate the desire and determination to move forward and great things can happen. Let’s hope this continues to buoy our region, county and communities creating the excitement and drive to move us forward.
SRKM Christmas ’17
We received a very cool Christmas Card (right) from our friends at SRKM Architecture. They used an elevation from Sand Hill Farm apartments as their cover picture adding a couple of wreaths on the door. A great idea to memorialize the project this way! We really appreciate their efforts and can’t wait to see if the building looks as good in person as it does in pictures. Thanks guys! Merry Christmas!
Sand Hill Farm Apartments are moving along. Footing and frost walls have been poured. We’re taking advantage of this week’s warm spell to get the perimeter insulation in place and complete the backfill. Installation of interior underslab infrastructure will begin Thursday. We hope to be pouring slabs next week. Things are moving forward!
State Exchange Bank – 1936
Excerpt from the Culver Citizen, December 15, 2017
The picture to the right was in the Friday, December 15, 2017 edition of the Culver Citizen. As I’ve discussed here before, a portion of Easterday Construction’s early years were spent on the second floor of the State Exchange Bank in downtown Culver. By inference, I believe that we would have been there at this time. (Easterday Construction was started some time in the 1920’s and didn’t move to its current location until the 1950’s.)
I recently toured the second floor of the bank building and assessed some of the facade repairs needed. Even with my experience it’s hard to see the old building pictured here under the remodeled skin that is on it now. It would be interesting to see the plans that made the transition. With the current trend towards preservation, led in Indiana by Indiana Landmarks, pictures like this bring new perspective. From experience, no one took any time to preserve what gets buried since the new facade is an improvement. Why would anyone ever want to go back? Which makes going back cost prohibitive. But the nostalgia of pictures like these can’t help but prompt some bittersweet what-if’s…
Since Easterday Construction resided in the building at that time, I have to wonder if we did the renovation discussed. Did we add the cafeteria? As a tenant, was my great grandfather a regular there? It’s interesting to speculate, but those are things lost to history.
Thanks to Judith Burns for making the picture available to the Citizen through her website.
Sand Hill Farm Ground Breaking Ceremony
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.
