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.
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.
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.
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.
I have a potential client that asked us about upgrading some institutional restrooms to make them more modern and inviting. They asked us if we had any experience. Of course two projects immediately came to mind. We completed work on the Grace Baptist Church restrooms in 2010. The existing restrooms were functional, but need expansion and modernization. We were able to accomplish that within the tight parameters. We were able to move an adjacent mechanical room to the second floor and expand into that space.
Before
After
In the case of the St. Mary of the Lake restrooms, we changed the chase locations and were able to mostly stay within the same footprint. So yes, we have experience in bringing old restrooms up to code and modernizing their aesthetic!
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 theĀ event, we were impressed with it all. Great Job!