Tag:Culver
Blast from the Past: St. Mary of the Lake
There was just a Dedication day for St. Mary of the Lake Catholic Church on August 28th. This year is the 70th anniversary of laying the corner stone for the Church. I don’t know if Easterday Construction was involved with the construction of the Church then, but we have completed several projects there of which I’m aware.
At one point in the recent past, we removed all the pews and replaced the floors in the sanctuary. We also remodeled and updated the bathrooms in the basement just off the community room. (Have you ever been threatened by a grumpy Priest with a gun?) But the biggest remodel we did was the creation of a new entrance and Day Chapel at the front of the Sanctuary with a glass wall partition between the two.
You can read a fairly detailed description of the project here. We won and ABC Award of Excellence for this project when it was completed in 2007.
Heritage Park Pergola Dedication
The Heritage Park Pergola Dedication was in the Culver Citizen last week. The project was built by Easterday Construction Co., Inc. in the 90’s. It was commissioned by Richard Ford. I’ve discussed it here, here and here in the past.
One of the cool things about working in construction is the ability to drive around our area and see the projects that become history over time. Great Grandpa Easterday wasn’t the best about recording the early history of Easterday Construction… He was too busy running a business! But for those of us that remember, we see reminders of our beginnings as we look around Culver and throughout our region.
The Pony Barn remains adjacent to the Easterday Construction Co., Inc. office as a reminder of when the site was the Easterday beef farm at the edge of town. (Before the high school was built, neighborhood kids would ride their bikes to the north end of Slate Street and feed treats to the Grandpa Easterday’s Hereford Cattle in the field there.) The dedication marker on the elementary school gym is a reminder of a depression era project we completed, when we had a three digit phone number and our offices were in on the top floor of the State Exchange Bank Building (Now First Farmers Bank & Trust). Those that remember that history are disappearing. Only the 3rd and 4th generations of the Easterday Construction family remain and some of them have passed on. Those of us that are left still remain proud of the mark we have left in the history of Culver and surrounding communities.
Strange Use of Funds (cont.)
This is a Culver follow up on the Burr Oak post, Strange Use of Funds, from last September. I still vacillate between amusement at the absurdity of that project and outrage at the wasted tax dollars.
In any case, my bemusement extends to Culver and the thinking that went into the crosswalk from the southwest corner to the northwest corner of intersection of S.R. 10 & S.R. 17 at the end of Lake Shore Drive. First, it’s an absurd place for a crosswalk. As with some of those pointed out in the Burr Oak post, there is no connecting walk on the north side. Second, there are no storm drains or even right-of-way swales, so the condition pictured to the right, is pretty normal when there is any rain at all. Third, in the best of conditions, as shown in the picture below, the corner remains muddy after a rain, the walk is below the road and the surrounding grass, and it runs directly into a gas line marker and part of a stone wall!
This was a Town of Culver project, but I assume this design falls squarely within INDOT requirements. Culver just wanted a sidewalk going west to accommodate Culver Academy students walking to the Family Dollar. This extra little feature was no doubt a INDOT requirement, costing several thousand dollars in engineering and construction. Money spent to solve an non-existent issue, while not fixing real issues, i.e. flooding and obstacles, that make this even less useful, if that’s even possible.
I often wonder if others see these things. For any of you that have looked at this and scratched your head, did you also notice the weird hump in the sidewalk just west of this intersection? The rest of the new walk pretty much follows the curb grade, except for the 20′ +/- section right there that rises up 4″-6″ and then back down for no discernible reason. I suspect someone kicked a grade stake and no one noticed until it was too late, but that’s just a theory. There could be many other explanations. It just looks weird though…
Keep your eyes open people. You never know what you’ll run across. Best to just be amused, because impotent outrage will just make you crazy.
Dunes Approvals
The Dunes received a major subdivision plat approval and site plan approval from the Culver Plan Commission on June 18th and from the Culver Town Council on June 26th. This was somewhat a foregone conclusion since Culver has been working with the developer for over a year on this project. It was interesting though that neither entity passed these approvals unanimously.
The preponderance of people in attendance at the meetings were against the project. Some in its entirety, but most in its scale. Some (falsely in my opinion) called the Town to task for not communicating enough and not listening to concerns. (If there is one thing that I would say Culver is above average in, it’s communication with its citizens…) There were also those that attempted to complain on both sides of the issues, saying it was too big, but might be left incomplete; it was being pushed to quickly, but the developer shouldn’t be give 8 years to complete it; it was not planned to be part of the community, but but it should be connected directly to State Road 17, to direct traffic out of community.
I remain generally in favor of the project. I am a little disappointed in the the follow through on requirements the town had placed on the project. The project presentation to the plan commission has been delayed twice because of engineering questions being unanswered. As presented, at the meeting, most of those were answered “in concept”, but details were still not complete. There were also pending questions regarding the projects connection to South Main Street that were not complete. And then there was the statement from the developer that the town would be receiving a lot of money from increased TIF capture on this project which could be directed towards some of the short falls in water and sewer needs. Many of these things affect adjacent property owners, including a wetlands and the town’s own well field, while the money being proposed for water and sewer improvements had previously been suggested for other TIF district needs not connected to this project. I would have liked to have seen all these things tied down before authorizing them to proceed.
I was pleased that many of the questions from the audience were addressed, but I have concerns with their substantiation. I do not in anyway want to speak ill of the developer and their honesty regarding the project, but the answers given were off-the-cuff, having little if any documentation or requirements of follow-through. Many of the questions were, frankly, not the business of anyone but project investors, but the reassurances carried no weight. While I trust that everything said was in good faith, there is nothing that keeps them from changing direction on them if economics of the project suggest better uses of funds. As suggested here before (second to last paragraph), their development agreement included none of the delineated requirements seen in past agreements.
That said, I think many of those protesting this development fail to understand that this project was not a surprise, but something that has been in the Town of Culver’s plans and one of their goals for over a decade. When the Culver Garden Court property was annexed around 2010, the surrounding property was annexed as well. It was rezoned as R-2 to promote housing in that area. When the last revisions to the Culver Zoning Ordinance were completed, R-2 was rewritten to allow higher density developments. The 2014 Comprehensive Plan suggested, due to citizen input, that more housing is needed. The Stellar Communities surveys of 2016 and 2017 indicated more housing is needed. The 2024 Comprehensive Plan still indicated the need for more housing, even with The Dunes under discussion. This was not a project that required a rezoning or multiple variances to make happen. It fits with the planned development of the town.
Do I think things might have been done better? Always. Until I’m appointed benevolent dictator, I will most likely always see alternatives that I would have pursued. (I still have questions about whether it follows the Culver Complete Streets Ordinance, whether there were drywells added, where they drain and who owned them, and whether the wetlands have been properly addressed, etc.) Do I think those in charge were (mostly) following the will of the majority of citizens? Yes.
Sunny Thoughts on Solar Panels
September 16, 2024
Kevin Berger
Commentary, Culver, Marshall County, Plymouth, Politics, Tips
Community, Culver, government, Tips, Trends
I’ve been watching/reading about all the Solar Farm controversy in Marshall County with a mixture of amusement and disappointment. While I don’t advocate unlimited rights to a property owner, I would advocate tipping the scale in favor of the owner’s decisions about use of their property. My main thought is how the more things change, the more they stay the same. This is a repeat of what happened when there was the discussion about wind farms in Marshall County a few years back. (Wind Farm Posts here and here.)
In both cases, spurious arguments are put forth, when I believe the real reason for disliking either of them is aesthetics. Those against them don’t like looking at them. As with wind farms, I can understand that and feel it is a valid argument. To each, there own… But it was a much more understandable argument regarding wind farms than solar panels.
The setbacks of 300′, 500′ or more being requested seem ridiculous. Marshall County isn’t a table top, but it is pretty darned flat. The high point in Marshall County is 895 MSL and the low point is 775 MSL with an average of 810 MSL per the Joint Highway Research Project by Purdue University. That’s not a whole lot of topographic relief and I’m suspicious that the low number is actually under water! That tells you that there aren’t many areas where a grove of 20′ to 30′ evergreens or mixed plantings wouldn’t hide what’s in the field from anyone on the ground; even from a distance. This would solve the concern some have expressed about the sun reflecting off the panels too. Large setbacks are usually used to protect against noise or odors, not visual issues that can be hidden by a vegetative buffer. These setbacks requested are meant to make property unbuildable unless it’s an excessively large tract of land. Admittedly, I’m pretty indifferent on the aesthetic issue, but I don’t know that a picked cornfield with an inactive sprinkler system sitting vacant from Fall until Spring is a particularly bucolic landscape view either. It is just one of those things that we live with and allow to the property owner.
There is the argument about chemicals from solar panels leaching into the soil. For the most part, new solar panels are solid state devices composed of silicon and glass, with trace amounts of gold, silver, copper and other valuable materials which people in the industry will be glad to retrieve and recycle. There is also the issue that most farmers are leasing land that is marginally productive as farmland, which requires large chemical applications to make them productive. Some of these properties were potato farms in the past, which required hundreds of pounds of fertilizer per acre. As part of this argument, I’ve heard, “Why not put solar panels up to cover parking lots and buildings first, before threatening farmland!?” If there was any merit to the chemical leaching argument, I would much rather have any bad things filtered through soil, rather than running directly into storm drains and thus, our rivers and streams. There’s enough of that coming off cars and trucks in parking lots and on streets. Not that I don’t see merit in solar panels for covered parking. But I assume it’s the same reason they don’t graze cows in solar farm fields. They would need to greatly beef up (pun intended) the support structures for cows rubbing against them and thus, even more so for cars.
There are those that express concern about the loss of farmland which currently produces food products. I would prefer to see some soil analysis and see solar farms placed only on marginally productive land, but much of the placement is based on access to the electric grid. To some extent this is self regulating with property owners making the economic decision themselves. I am sure, if the payout for farming was greater, the land would remain in crops. At it’s greatest proposed coverage, the proposed solar farms would only cover single digit percentages of the total Marshall County farmland available. Is this any different than allowing subdivisions to be built and lots to be sold for housing or industry? Plus, check out some of the interesting things Purdue University is suggesting for agrivoltaics. There are options to keep farms productive as food sources as well as for harvesting solar. They’re just two different ways of harvesting sunshine.
There are those that say solar is a boondoggle and wouldn’t make it without subsidies. Possibly, but farmers know how subsidies work as they are sometimes paid not to plant, told what to plant and subsidized for planting specific crops. They are well versed in how to play that game and how to achieve the best economic benefit from it. Are solar panels the solution to global warming? Hardly. Nor has much of what’s out there touted to change the weather ever resulted in the the reputed outcome. But let landowners take advantage of the rare opportunity to benefit from this one.
One thing that has come out in this that particularly scares me is the bonding or other means of providing for decommissioning of these installations at the end of their life. If we start down that path, where does it end? Drive around Marshall County and you will see abandoned silos, farm windmills, railroad beds on abandoned rail lines, railroad depots, grain elevators, former school buildings, houses, collapsing barns and unusable commercial buildings. That same argument could be used to say we should prevent any of those things happening again, but can you imagine the cost of construction if you had to plan/pay for end of life removal of EVERYTHING? Most construction puts significant funds at risk when the investment in these these things is made. The increased cost due to this increased risk would undoubtedly stop some expansions and new endeavors from happening. In the case of solar farms, you’re asking the companies involved to plan for the cost of removal 30 years from now. What does that look like and how would labor inflation costs balloon that? Building’s generally have lifespans of 2 to 4 times that. How does that even work!?
Again, I believe all of this amounts to spurious concerns, past the aesthetic issues. I’m not thrilled with the aesthetics of high voltage powerlines crisscrossing Marshall County, Those power lines are largely what makes Marshall County attractive to solar farms. But these things benefit my life. Stopping them means hurting other property owners and limiting their livelihoods. If we collectively care enough about stopping these things, then we should put our money where our mouth is and pool funds to purchase and control the property ourselves. Otherwise, be quiet and let progress move on…
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