ANGELA DAVIS: Say, what's the story behind senior housing co-ops starting in Minnesota, for goodness sakes?
DENNIS JOHNSON: It is an interesting situation. One of the senior execs at Ebenezer back in the early to mid 1970s was observing the population in Richfield, Edina, which was basically a blue collar population as they aged in their homes, dealt with raking leaves and mowing lawn and shoveling snow and changing storm windows and cleaning gutters and looking at what other alternatives they might have to get away from that.
And frankly, there weren't any. I mean, it was basically going from a single family home to a skilled care facility. And so he developed several objectives for a senior housing facility. And it should be one that the seniors could age in place, one that was adaptable for aging in place, one where they would have maximum control, could live independently and not have to pay for unneeded or unwanted services.
And he bounced that idea around for a while. And finally, somebody suggested, you're talking about a cooperative. And that's what he did. He then pursued the development of a senior housing cooperative, and Ebenezer was the developer, 338 unit building in Edina 7500 York.
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