ORIGINALLY WRITTEN JERRY ENGLER
Brothers Jess, Jarvis and Justin Whiteman (from left) are ready to receive clients at their new 14-bay boat and camper storage unit along Pawnee Road and the turnoff to Cottonwood Point, just north of Eastshore at Marion Reservoir. “I guess we were following the saying, ‘If you build it, they will come,'” Jess said. Boat and camper storage is one of the few kinds of construction the Marion County Planning Commission would encourage in the buffer zone around the lake, according to Bobbi Strait, planning and zoning director.
New boat and camper storage facilities for Marion Reservoir, north of Eastshore by the Whiteman brothers and in Canada by Canada Bait & Tackle, are nearing completion with the approval of the Marion County Planning and Zoning Commission.
The construction for Canada Bait is below the reservoir drainage, but the new unit by Justin, Jesse and Jarvis Whiteman is in a former hay meadow across the road from the turnoff to Cottonwood Point at the reservoir with water drainage directly to it.
Although a buffer zone exists around the reservoir where further home building is discouraged-with its limits to be further defined in new studies-County Planning and Zoning Director Bobbi Strait said the new storage units may fall under the type of construction to be encouraged.
She said with the blue-green algae and sedimentation problems at the reservoir, homes come with water and sewage facilities that potentially could contribute to more problems. No water or sewage is required for boat storage.
Strait said, “We will never be able to allow people to do what they want, carte blanche, around the reservoir.”
She’s also sure that in approving the building permits for the storage, members of the commission felt as she did.
“With the price of gas, it allows owners of campers and boats to store them (instead of towing them back and forth.)
“That means those owners will keep coming back. It’s good income for our community. It encourages them to keep coming back into the county, buying gas, groceries and other things here. It’s good economic development.”
Camper and boat storage has been available at the reservoir for several years-at Canada Bait & Tackle and west of Whitemans’ at “Junior” J.C. Ehrlich’s home.
Jess Whiteman, 23, said his family came up with the idea for a boat storage in about July. He said they were influenced by seeing as many as 40 to 50 campers go by daily on a weekend at the home just to the south where he and Jarvis, 22, live.
They broke ground for a 12-pole feet by 30-pole-feet building, 14 feet tall, Oct. 1. The building is being done by Cleary Construction.
“I guess we were following the saying, ‘If you build it, they will come,'” Jess Whiteman said.
The unit, which could begin holding storage now, includes 14 bays with six of them enclosed, and the rest of them partly open.
All three of the brothers hold other jobs. Justin, 26, works for an auto dealership in Wichita. Jess is a welder for Agco in Hesston, and Jarvis works for Marion Marble Works and is an independent mechanic.
Jess said they intend to do more work at the building as time goes by, such as putting up a barbed wire fence around it. The storage will have security lights and motion lights.
Jesse noted the positive attitude of the Planning Commission toward the storage project and toward the similar project at Canada Bait & Tackle since. Both businesses applied for building permits at the same meeting.
Donna Kreutziger of Canada Bait & Tackle said her family’s new unit, ordered in unassembled as a Heritage Building Systems steel building, has been put up, and is nearing completion, by Carr Construction of Marion.
Kreutziger said Canada Bait & Tackle started storage rental outside, and then had a building put in near the bait shop with eight units seven years ago.
That building is full now with outside storage also continuing and new business coming in, so she didn’t feel a new building is much of a risk.
The new building is about the same size as the old building, she said, with bays open to the east.
Kreutziger said the units also make good storage spaces for trucks and cars-“anything motorized.”
