Ecumen’s new senior housing community in Worthington, Minn., uniquely honors the area’s agricultural heritage.

Other interior design features aesthetically integrated into the building’s modern architecture include vintage signage from a dairy; antique farm implements; historic photos highlighting area farms and other sites, and a windmill, which once generated crop irrigation and water for animals by pumping well water from beneath nearby farmland. Interestingly, the view from the building’s west-end patios overlook a 21st Century wind farm where amid planted fields, new windmills are generating electricity from the Southwestern Minnesota winds.

“When developing senior housing, we seek to localize it based on the insights of people who will be living there,” said Steve Ordahl, senior vice president of business development for Ecumen. “People want uniqueness and character. They want their home to feel like their home, and not a sterile cookie cutter design. We’re very sensitive to that. It’s essential to creating a community in which people want to live.”

Ecumen is an innovative senior housing and services leader, empowering people to live richer and fuller lives. Based in Shoreview, Minn., Ecumen is a not-for-profit company that operates 70 senior housing communities and develops senior housing. The Minneapolis/St. Paul Business Journal has named Ecumen one of Minnesota’s “Best Places to Work” five years in a row. Visit www.ecumen.org.