SITE Improvement Association Celebrates 60 Years
The SITE Improvement Association might not be a household name, but its 270 members are well known to all port and terminal operators on the central Mississippi River. It is an independent association of contractors in eastern Missouri who work on infrastructure projects, including marine infrastructure.
On September 12, the group celebrated its 60th anniversary with a riverside bash in St. Charles County, Mo., on the Missouri River. Terry Bangert, chief operating officer of Gateway Dredging & Contracting LLC, helped organize the event.
“We have river cruises every 10 years,” said Jeremy Bennett, executive director of the SITE Improvement Association and the event’s principal organizer. “We had the last one in 2016 on the Mississippi River. The Missouri River was a nice change, with sightings of bald eagles. We passed underneath the Discovery Bridge, which some of our members are helping to renovate, so we got a good view from below.”
The event featured a local band, a shoreside party tent, two river cruises, barges with tents for feasting and socializing and a giant sand sculpture. The two cruise barges were pushed by the mv. Patricia Lynn and the mv. David J. Bangert, named after Terry Bangert’s parents.
The first cruise carried 152 people, and the second cruise carried 250. Bennett said it took about six months for the Coast Guard permissions for the cruises. In between cruises, guests ate, drank and socialized at the party tent to the music of a live band. “The number of folks shows the increase in our membership over the years,” Bennett said. Total attendance was about 400 people.
Bennett credited and thanked the Viehmann family; Brian Viehman is CEO of Gateway Dredging and Contracting. Besides Gateway, event sponsors included Cherokee Hauling, Thomas Industrial Coatings, Girdner Contracting, Erlinger Crane Services, Leritz Busy Bee Paving, K.J. Unnerstall Construction, TraMar Contracting, N.B. West Contracting, Drilling Service Company, Martin Marietta, Winter Brothers Material Company, Collins & Hermann Infrastructure Solutions, Scharf Construction Company, Byrne & Jones Construction and C.E. Bollmeier Company Inc.
