Written by Bill Lindeke, from MinnPost.
“I grew up using streetcar back in the 40’s, so it’s nothing new to me,” Jim Daily told me this week.
Daily’s parents started letting him take the University Avenue streetcar when he was 10 years old, heading to downtown Minneapolis for a movie at one of the big Hennepin Avenue theaters. And today, it seems like history is repeating itself, because Jim Daily is taking the train up and down University Avenue on his way from the Episcopal Homes, a large housing complex for seniors next to the Green Line.
“You have no stairs to climb; it’s faster,” said Daily, who has been an independent resident at the Homes for years. “They keep adding user-friendly signs to the walkways so that people are getting used to crossing at the lights.”
The Episcopal Homes has a long, quirky history, sitting at the edge of St. Paul’s Midway. But partly by coincidence and partly by design, the complex is on a leading edge of providing senior housing close to urban transit. Millennials might be getting all the press, but the “back to the city” movement for the Twin Cities’ oldest citizens might be more important.