Home Sweet Home
NorthWay Community Trust, Annual Report 2005
Alan Arthur, president of Central Community Housing Trust, credits the Harrison Neighborhood Association for developing the plan to make the Ripley Gardens project a reality. The idea was fairly simple: take the historic Ripley Hospital complex and renovate and convert it into affordable housing units. But making it happen was another matter. Now three years later, as a result of their efforts, the hospital is being transformed into 52 units of rental housing and eight for-sale town homes built in partnership with Habitat for Humanity.
The project attracted numerous funding and lending partners, including NorthWay Community Trust. The decision for NorthWay to provide a partnership investment was an easy one, fulfilling one of its long-term strategies - to create affordable housing in North Minneapolis.
Arthur would like to see involvement of this type become more of the norm than the exception. He hopes the success of Ripley Gardens demonstrates to developers and investors that communities are eager to take an active role in planning their neighborhoods, working together with organizations like NorthWay to make projects like this one happen. "Communities need to the architects of their futures," Arthur said.
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