Edina Senior Center Looks To 'Tickle Fancy' of Baby Boomers

Donna Tilsner took over the reins of the Edina Senior Center on May 1 after more than 12 years in the parks and recreation department, running adult and youth athletics programs.

We spoke with Tilsner about the center’s programming and the future for its 1,200 members.

What do you see as the senior center’s role in the community?

We host a number of different groups. We have bridge and 500 and canasta. We have all those different times of games. We also are showing movies. We have a lot of different clubs from knitting and crocheting to a computer club where people can bring their iPad, their Nook, and come together: Someone will say ‘Yes, I tried this,’ and they can share their knowledge of that.

The tours that we have are also wonderfully attended. We’ve gone to Red Wing, we’re going to Winona, we just went to the Lakewood Cemetery and took a tour of downtown Minneapolis. The tours are guided and we stop and have a nice lunch.

It’s a very social place. People are meeting old friends from before, they’re gathering new friends.

How do you envision the senior center changing in the future?

We have an advisory council, and I’m going to be asking them to do a little work with us in the fall and winter to find out why are people joining and what do people like.

The park board and the city council wanted a study sometime in 2013, and they’ve put that on the back burner, but I want to get started on that. I’ve talked to some of the other senior centers to find out how big are their memberships and what they’re charging for rentals, to see how we compare with everyone else. We’ve got this beautiful building so we should try to utilize it with our programs or with rentals. In the future, if people have a bridal party, anniversary, even a funeral gathering, we might be able to host it for them and charge a little money. 

We need to figure out as a city, do we just do things inside the senior center, or outside the senior center, and I think we do both. In the next few months I want to advertise that we will have—I’m going to call it the “singles mingles.” You know, people who have lost a spouse and don’t go out for dinner, don’t go to happy hour because they don’t have anybody, but we could have the singles group meet and if they would like to go out to a movie or out for dinner. They’d meet here at the center to find out where they want to go, but that would be outside of the center.

How does the center serve Baby Boomers and younger seniors?

How do you get that younger generation senior to come into the building? Some of the younger seniors are still working at 62, 63, 64. Which is why I want to plan some night and evening programs to tickle their fancy a little bit.

We’re offering at least two programs right now, which would either be on a Saturday morning or an evening, which we’ve never done before. We’ve been an 8 to 4:30, Monday to Friday center. But we’d like to encourage some of the younger seniors to come as well.

I wonder, long-range, are we still going to be a senior center? Do people still want to be called a senior center? Do we change it to “active adult center”? People are active and they want to stay active.

I’m talking to Hoigaard’s right now, and I know they do a lot with the Nordic walking. I’d like to offer a class where you meet on this day and they’ll bring the poles. I’ve talked to the Westwood Nature Center, and this winter we’re going to do a cross-country ski and a snowshoe clinic. People who are still active will like that.