Culver Town Council Approves Engineering Contracts for INDOT Stellar Projects

The Culver Town Council has finalized contracts with the Troyer Group for engineering services on three of the town’s Stellar Community projects.

Town Manager Jonathan Leist told council members Tuesday that the agreements cover the projects that will be done with funding from the Indiana Department of Transportation. “So it’s State Road 10 sidewalks, West Jefferson Gateway, and Lake Maxinkuckee Trail,” he explained. “We’ve been awarded $2 million for those, and our local match, then, is $240,000.”

The contracts cover preliminary and right-of-way engineering, environmental plat, utility coordination, plan development, and project administration. Leist said that after some negotiation, the town and the Troyer Group agreed to a total cost of just over $419,000. “How this whole thing works: it’s they send us a proposal,” he explained. “There’s a boilerplate INDOT contract that INDOT puts on their website. They have a whole formula for what percentage of profit the company’s allowed to make on the projects, and Marcia Blansett, our local reviewer at INDOT at the LaPorte District’s already reviewed it and okayed it.”

Plans are also moving ahead on the Culver Beach Lodge renovation and the Cavalier Sports Park, which will be done with the help of the Indiana Office of Community and Rural Affairs. “We’re just trying to schedule and I think we’ve finally settled on a date here at the end of September for the OCRA projects,” Leist said, “to really get Shannon [McLeod], our grant administrator, Troyer Group, and Mosaic Building Solutions, along with [Park Superintendent] Amber [Cowell] and myself and [Clerk-Treasurer] Karen [Heim] all together, and go over timelines, budgets, et cetera, to get those projects moving forward.”

Leist says the actual planning and design phase should be starting very soon.