Tag:Easterday Construction
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.
Sand Hill Farm Ground Breaking Ceremony
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.
Careers in Construction
I just finished an article in the September/October issue of Building Indiana by Brad Benhart, Associate Professor of Practice at Purdue University’s School of Construction Management. A quote in the article resonated with me as it’s been something I’ve been talking to my friends in education about for years. “The message needs to change to all kids should learn skills for a career. College is not for everyone, and our society needs education and training to match the needs of the workers required.”
I’ve been pleased in recent years to see a change in thinking in the schools in our area. Many of them are providing technical school equivalency training in high school. Non-college careers are receiving more discussion. Things are improving, but we still have strides to make to end the bias towards college programs. We also need to instill the idea of life-long-learning as a positive thing and requirement for survival in today’s society. When I receive an application from a student who has been through a high school building trades class, they do receive preferential treatment because they have shown an interest and hopefully shown some aptitude for the trades. Unfortunately, this does not qualify them as a Journeyman Carpenter as some of them seem to think. Easterday Construction will help them achieve that goal through apprenticeship training if they are serious about it, but it requires a commitment to additional education on their part.
I don’t think this qualifies as a rant… I’ll reiterate that I have seen progress in recent years. But as per the quote, kids need to learn skills for a career. And if it’s your career, you should be interested in learning all you can to be the best at it you can be. This means education… and Life Long Continuing Education… Never miss the chance to learn and improve.
St. Mary of the Lake – Blessing of the Pets
It’s always nice to see a past project appear in the news. The picture at the right, borrowed from The Pilot News, Thursday, October 5th, 2017 shows the North Addition to the St. Mary of the Lake Catholic Church in Culver, which was completed in 2007.
We have completed several projects for St Mary of the Lake Catholic Church in Culver over the years. We appreciate being one of their go-to contractors and are proud of the work we have completed in partnership with them. We have completed minor and major renovations at the Church, some of which are listed on our website, working with three different priests and building committees.
The North Addition project created a handicap accessible entrance to a newly created Day Chapel behind the alter. We were extremely pleased with how the brick matched and the floating arches came together for this project. We’re also please to see it being used a the backdrop for photo ops like this. 10 years later, it has become an established fixture for the Church. The picture to the left, borrowed from the St. Mary of the Lake website shows the steel, wood and glass dividing wall that we installed between the Day Chapel and the Sanctuary.
Below is a color picture of the entrance as it was being completed in 2007.
Shady Rest Home
Easterday Construction belongs to Indiana Landmarks. Their recent email newsletter includes some pictures of the Shady Rest Home on the east side of Plymouth. For anyone one interested, the County is looking at options to repurpose this facility since Bowen Center‘s decision to cease operations there. The following is an excerpt from the Indiana Landmarks site regarding the home.
“In the days before welfare and social programs, and before the establishment of hospitals, nursing homes, and assisted-living facilities, people in need often had nowhere to turn. In 1848, Indiana passed new legislation requiring every Indiana county to “provide a public place wherein the unfortunate poor might have care.” Eventually, all 92 Indiana counties established “poor farms,” where able-bodied residents worked to offset the cost of residential care.
Local fanfare accompanied the Marshall County home opening in 1893. As the architecture makes evident, the county intended to create a quality home for their neediest citizens. Wing and Mahurin — a firm renowned for its Romanesque Revival public buildings — designed a grand Superintendent’s Quarters, with living and work space for the director and residents. Originally called the Marshall County Infirmary, the place earned its “Shady Rest” nickname from the many shade and fruit trees planted on the property.
Shady Rest Home today
Unfortunately, demolition has claimed a majority of Indiana’s historic county homes. In continual service for more than a century, Shady Rest is an anomaly. The county sold the facility in 1998, but it continued to serve as the Otis R. Bowen Center Shady Rest Home, a private residential center for adults who suffer from mental illness.
The Bowen Center closed Shady Rest this summer, and Marshall County commissioners are looking for ways to put the campus back in use. The five-acre property includes the main building, a large c. 1893 barn, a 1920s well house, and a garage.
The main building is listed in the National Register of Historic Places, which could make it eligible for Federal Rehabilitation Tax credits. Check out the National Register nomination for more interesting history about the Marshall County home. For more on efforts to find a reuse for the property, contact Marshall County commissioner Kurt Garner, 574-936-0613 or kurt.garner@gmail.com.”
Easterday Construction completed some renovation work on the facility back in the early 80’s. I was a plumber’s helper on part of that work, so I got to see some of the facility at that time. Unfortunately there wasn’t much effort to document projects at that time, so I don’t have any real details on what was done. I remember demolishing some nasty showers though!
It would be sad to lose this piece of history, though repurposing the facility may be challenging. Generally a buildings highest and best use is its original use and once that use has run its course, change is difficult. I’m sure with a little creativity, the County’s Committee on repurposing the building, currently being lead by Commissioner Kurt Garner, will find a suitable third life for this historic building.
