Cooperative living at the Plaza
For some residents, it’s all about the maintenance.
If you live at the Plaza and something breaks, it only takes a phone call to fix it, Steve Larsen, the board president, explained.
“Everything is taken care of,” he explained.
“I didn’t want to mow the lawn,” Charles Whiteford said.
The Plaza is apartment living but, because it’s a co-op, everyone owns their space and a portion of the shared space. It’s the largest co-op in the state and functions as a retirement community for ages 55 and up, but it is not assisted living. Residents must be able to take care of themselves although they can hire help from the community.
The amenities are part of the shared space. It all begins in a well-decorated lobby which is also a meeting space for the 100 residents. There’s usually something going on in the lobby, Larsen said. It might be a small group of friends stopping to chat on their way to other activities or it might be one of the many clubs getting ready to meet.
Just beyond the lobby is a dining room served by a full kitchen. Since all the apartments have their own full kitchen, meals at the Plaza are strictly optional. When the chef is there to prepare a meal, usually on Tuesday and Thursday, residents get to review the menu and reserve a meal ahead of time. In recent weeks, the dining room was closed to limit the possible spread of covid-19 and reserved meals were delivered to apartments.
The dining room is also the place for book club meetings, and some annual special events take place when the bar is open.
Evelyn MacLean, who has lived at the plaza since it opened in 2005, helped organize some of those events, including the Kentucky Derby party, the Super Bowl party and others.
Beyond a dining room, an outdoor gathering space features a barbecue, a walking trail, shuffleboard courts, and horseshoe area.
In the basement, every resident has an area for storage that can be locked. There’s also an exercise room, a pool table and a workshop full of tools.
Many of the tools, Larsen explained, were donated by residents who gave up their private workshops to move to the Plaza.
Once a month, there’s a movie night for Plaza residents. They also share a library.
Mickey Victor is another original resident. She watched the Plaza being built and moved into one of the larger apartments. After her husband died, she didn’t want to care for as much space, so she moved to a different Plaza apartment.
The apartments range from 700 square feet to 1,775 square feet. The larger spaces have two bedrooms and two baths, as well as a small den and several walk-in closets. Almost all the spaces have either a private balcony or patio. Most of the residents drive and some apartments have a garage or carport space.
The co-op is run by its own board of directors, but there’s a property manager who helps with the day-today business.
The board made the decisions about closing amenities due to covid-19 and is still in the process of reopening them, But, Larsen reported, no one at the Plaza got sick. If they had, they would have had help.
“We take care of each other, ” he said.