Tag:Tips
Taking One Thing Off the Plate…
In 2017, when I was serving on the Culver Stellar Committee, I volunteered to set up a Twitter, now X, account to promote Culver and the Stellar activities. Through that, I connected to Madison, Indiana, our sister Stellar Award winner, and many of the State agencies with which we were working. It was something I thought was important at the time, and I was happy to help promote Culver. Since that time, I have put up posts with pictures and reports about Town meetings, sent out promotional things and reposted many of the event announcements that appeared on Town, Gown and Lake. Most of what I see says that marketing should be multifaceted and you should meet your audience where they are. I assume some of them are on X. It wasn’t too onerous, but did take time converting PDFs to JPGs and editing things to the 140 character format. I included some humor here and there, but avoided anything I thought would be controversial.
Apparently I was wrong… Last week the Town said they had received complaints about it being too political. I’m not sure if that’s just because of the Elon controversy and the fact that it is X or if there was something else. (Maybe someone was upset about me reposting Notre Dame Women’s Basketball posts?) They couldn’t tell me what the issue was as this was decided without looking at the site, so it will remain one of life’s mysteries. I have at time posted or reposted things from elected officials, but never from candidates. In any case, I was asked to take the references to the Town off the feed or shut it down. 1) I was doing this as an promotion for the Town and if they don’t want that, I just won’t do it. (Thus this post’s title.) and 2) It’s not worth my time to figure out either of those things, so I made one last post and I’m letting it sit idle.
I’m choosing, mostly, to take this as a time saver for me. I do think it was a positive for Culver or I wouldn’t have continued it. Out of curiosity, I went back and looked and the site had 327 followers, including: News/Talk 95.3 MNC, Michiana Life, Pulaski County Community Foundation, Startup South Bend, INDOT Northwest, The Ron Rubin School for the Entrepreneur, Marshall County LLN, Swan Lake Resort, Anita Goodan (reporter), Purdue Center for Regional Development, Leadership Marshall County, Madison Main Street Program, Argos Hardware, Visit Marshall County, Marshall County Blueberry Festival, Summer Horan ABC57, The Pilot News, The Lakes Magazine, Patronicity, Indiana Philanthropy Alliance, Indiana Bond Bank, Jeff Rea (South Bend Chamber, South Bend Tribune, Economic Outlook), Indiana Office of Community and Rural Affairs (OCRA), South Bend Elkhart Regional Partnership, US Fish and Wildlife, Hoosier State Chronicles, Suzanne Crouch (former Lt. Gov.), Launch Indy, Max 98.3, Visit Indiana, Marian University, Inside INdiana Business, Indiana Economic Development Corp. (IEDC), AIM, Marshall County EDC and that’s every entity and none of the people. Many of those sites are from outside Culver, so they were seeing Lions Club Pancake Breakfasts, Lakefest calendars, and other events they might not have otherwise seen. Honestly, I don’t know if those are all still active sites, but they were at one time when they chose to connect to Culver. And maybe having that many followers is the problem, since I’ve been so political and controversial! Ha!
Most people don’t know that I was behind the @CulverISstellar site and I mostly took pains to keep it that way. I was doing this as something to give back to the Town. I feel it was an asset to the Town or I wouldn’t have been doing it. As is typical with social media these days, apparently someone couldn’t just scroll on. If there had been a negative comment with someone questioning a post, I would have just taken it down. I hope it was not just at Town control issue, because that would be even more sad. I made 6,547 posts over the last 8 years. With X, it’s hard to tell who is looking unless you’re controversial. I wasn’t.
In any case, this is another end of an era for me. Such is life.
The Remnant Trust
Somewhat a Blast from the Past last week was the discovery of a display of artifacts from The Remnant Trust at the Columbia Club in Indianapolis. Their mission to preserve historic documents promoting individual liberty and human dignity led them to possess original copies of the Declaration of Independence and others even older, written by the likes of Isaac Newton and Aristotle.
In 2010, we met with the founder of The Remnant Trust, Brian Bex, to discuss an OrthoWorx project to house some of their documents in the former Billy Sunday Museum in Winona Lake. (Billy Sunday was a professional baseball player from the Warsaw area, turned evangelist.) OrthoWorx considered this project part of their effort to address the “trailing spouse” issue they had when attracting employees for the Warsaw Orthopedics industry. Executives being recruited to work in Warsaw reported pushback from their spouses who would rather live in a more urban environment with the associated amenities.
The existing building had a lot of rustic shiplap pine woodwork and didn’t have the feel they wanted for a scholarly museum. Office space was limited and the HVAC was inadequate. It also still had much of the Billy Sunday memorabilia in place. Despite all of this, the price was right and we were hired to implement the renovation. The plans for this renovation were completed by Scearce Rudisel Architects (now SRKM Architecture), under the direction of Mary Ellen Rudisel.
New lighting, office space and flooring were part of the overall renovation giving the space a more updated feel. Some of the woodwork was salvaged and relocated to keep the theme consistent. But the main focus was the vault.
The vault would be where the documents would be stored. Most of these would be stored on shelving in standard library manner, while others were placed in their own cases. It was designed to look unassuming, but that belied the underlying construction. Special effort was made to seal the space so that it was protected from the elements. Walls were steel stud construction with double layers of abuse resistant drywall. The door was designed to look like a standard door, but serve as a high security vault door with environmental seals. Special lighting was installed to assure that no detrimental affects to the documents would be caused. The space was also environmentally controlled by a redundant, high-end HVAC system with temperature control that would keep the vault within 1 degree of temperature set point and within 1 percent of humidity set point whether the vault was empty or occupied. Occupancy varied, since it was vacant the majority of the time, but also allowed for visiting scholars as well as school classes and the occasional Remnant Trust party of 30 or more.
One of the interesting tenets of The Remnant Trust is that these works, while revered, should be accessible. Visiting scholars could be seen wearing gloves and turning pages with microspatulas while visitors from the public are allowed to touch these documents, some many hundreds of years old.
Unfortunately, after a few years at this location, The Remnant Trust found a university benefactor and moved the collection to another location. Warsaw did not prove out to be the best location for visiting scholars and for sharing their collection. It’s a loss to our area. But seeing the smaller display in the Columbia Club reminded me of their work. You can make an appointment to for a private tour here, though it’s open to guests and members to walk through anytime.
Solar Panel Ideas
I’m always amazed when I see snow covered solar panels. Even some of of the ground mounted panels that are at a significant angle during the winter months often have snow clinging to them. In the case of the Culver home in the picture to the right, not only is there a reasonable angle on the panels that you would think would let the snow slide off, but you can see that the snow has melted off the rest of the roof around them. How is it staying on the black solar panels!?
So, I have a few ideas about this:
- Can some of the power generated be used for some minimal heat for the panels. I wouldn’t think it would take a lot to warm the surface enough that the snow doesn’t stick or that it slides off. Granted, this might require some power storage to handle that middle-of-of-the-night snow, but could it be done efficiently enough to offset the power loss from leaving them snow covered?
- Can the face of the panels be created with a non-stick surface like a new frying pan? Just slick it up a bit, so nothing sticks to it. That might help with dirt and debris as well. Every rain becomes a rinse cycle!
- Can someone come up with the equivalent of Solar Pam? Maybe Pam is the answer!? They make it for air fryers, grills, baking, etc. Maybe they need to run with this idea. “Spray your solar panels with Pam every Fall for a snow free winter!”
- Or do we go mechanical? The new installations have mechanisms where the panels follow the sun and in some farming applications the panels just go vertical to allow vehicle access through rows of panels. If 90 degrees isn’t enough, maybe they literally rotate to where the snow falls off. Or can we put the equivalent of a windshield wiper on them to squeegee them once or twice a day.
Someone is missing a good opportunity here. Maybe Elon is already working on this, but if he isn’t, he should be…
MCCF ’24 – End of Year Donations
Easterday Construction has always supported Marshall County Community Foundation (MCCF). This year there’s a way to increase the impact of your donation either through existing funds or starting one of your own. Consider MCCF in your end of year charitable giving.
More Targeting…
June 9, 2025
Kevin Berger
Commentary, Culver, Tips
Community, Culver, government, Tips, Trends
Following up on last week, “Targeting” in the pre-Dunes era of the Town of Culver (TOC) should be considered for local businesses as well as new residents. While there have been a few suggestions floated regarding new businesses, the needs of an increased population should be reviewed by all existing businesses too.
TOC has seen many businesses come and go. On the recreation and entertainment side, TOC has lost bike shops, pool halls, bowling alleys, arcades, theaters, lake tour boats and if you want to go way, way back, dance halls and roller-skating rinks. Most recently in this category, we lost the pottery making shop and the axe throwing venue.
On the services side, TOC no longer has bait shops, clothing stores, shoe stores, dry cleaners, furniture stores, appliance stores, flooring stores, lumber yards, a taxi service or a place to rent a tuxedo. At one time there were several car dealerships and while TOC has retained one car mechanic, there used to be five or more as part of full-service gas stations.
I can quickly name the locations of eight full-service gas stations that served Culver all in the same era. That’s not something that is applicable anymore anywhere. That’s not just a TOC thing. Some of the others listed above fall into that same category. Some of these things have also been absorbed into other businesses. The question is, what are the needs of TOC’s expanding community and how should they be addressed?
I know there is some surveying planned to help address this, but who gets surveyed and how is important. I am not suggesting that the surveying be too targeted, but I am suggesting that some of the surveying be weighted. I would guess there would be a difference in what full-time residents say and what part-time residents say. Part of the key is including question on why part-time residents remain part-time residents.
Group 1 – Full-time Residents: This group has stuck with TOC, either from inertia, job ties, family ties or general fealty to Culver. What would make their lives better?
Group 2 – Full-time Residents – Community High School kids: When they think of Culver, why are they considering leaving or staying and are the reasons things that TOC can affect?
Group 3 – Culver Academy Students: How do they see the town? What’s missing? What’s great? What would make them consider returning here after graduation or after college?
Group 4 – Full-time Residents – Formerly Summer Only: Some of these people lived in Indianapolis or Chicago and bought their Culver home as a summer get-away, but now live here full-time. Why? What brought them to make Culver their home and what do they miss now that they’re here that differs from when it was just a get-away?
Group 5 – Pandemic Escapists: TOC missed a huge opportunity during the pandemic of 2020. There were a significant number of lake cottages that were part-time residences before the pandemic that became full-time residences during the pandemic. Culver was their place to escape to… What could TOC have done to keep those people here? If they were called back to work, that’s not something solvable, but if they were remote working and could continue to remote work, what sent them home in lieu of making TOC home?
Group 6 – Realtors: TOC has a plethora of realtors, either based in Culver or working Culver from surrounding communities. No doubt they hear a lot about why someone is considering moving here and what they see as the pros and cons.
There was a business subcommittee created as part of Culver Crossroads. (Remember Culver Crossroads? Another positive initiative that lost momentum when key people exited.) That subcommittee brought in Alan Steele from the Small Business Development Center (SBDC) in South Bend. An analysis at that time really only named one missing element in our area, which was a sporting good store. That was 3+ years ago and without considering 300 additional residents. What would be different now? SBDC could possibly help with analyzing survey data to identify targeted opportunities.
Some of the potential needs could be added to existing businesses, whether as added offerings or actual stores within a store. (An example of this was the ice cream shop, which was popular, but not viable. Ice cream was added to Culver Coffee Company’s offerings, which seems to be doing well.) Along with helping existing businesses identify the upcoming needs, TOC could assist with marketing. Most of the TOC marketing being done in the past few years has been geared towards bringing in tourist business, but marketing existing businesses, Welcome Wagon style, to new residents could be helpful. This was done to some extent when The Paddocks opened, but there would be the opportunity to do this with The Dunes as well.
Where needs are identified, TOC could help with micro loans. This would be a way of helping businesses prepare to meet the needs foreseen in the surveys. TOC could also consider waiving some of the fees associated with expanding an existing business. Waive permit fees for expansions, new signage and other sundry costs.
As I’ve observed in the past, Culver can be quick to pass judgement on new businesses they don’t like. How about instead of complaining, be proactive and recruit (target) what is desirable?
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