Potter Ridge Senior Living recently won the Chamber of Commerce’s Housing and Development Business of the Year award — much to the joy of the facility’s 52 residents and staff.
“With hard work and dedication to our families and residents, the Potter Ridge team is very proud of this accomplishment and we couldn’t achieve this award without the help from our residents and families,” said Alondra Urzua, executive director. “Thank you to all of our friends, family and everyone who voted for supporting us. We are beyond grateful to be a part of this amazing community.”
The privately owned senior living facility offers independent and assisted living to ages 55 and older. Urzua said that while the average age of residents is between 87 and 90 years old, most are fairly independent. For those that need help, the facility provides services for residents ranging from medication management to showering to helping them get their mail.
While the senior living community opened around 2005, this is the first time it has won the award. Urzua said she thinks this year’s win is related to an increased presence in the community.
“Over the last couple of years, we’ve grown a little bit more in our community. We’ve started to include other parts of our community into our residence life, making sure that our neighbors are included as well,” she explained.
“We host a lot of events in the summertime, which is great for our residents because they get to be outside and be with their families and things like that, and then for our neighbors as well. We live in a pretty residential area over here, so we have a lot of neighbors who come over when we have events. It’s nice for them to be able to see who we live around.”
When people get to the later stages in life, every day is worth celebrating, and Potter Ridge Senior Living tries to provide as many opportunities for that as possible.
The facility hosts birthday parties every single month, has festivities for nearly every holiday and organizes other events like the Phantom Car Show and National Night Out as well as a week-long celebration for Assisted Living Week.
In addition to these annual events, residents, friends and family got together to celebrate the Housing and Development Business of the Year award during a special event in February.
“Our residents were super, super excited that we won,” Urzua said. “I mean, we couldn’t do it without the amazing residents that we have, but they were so happy for our team here that they wanted to have a party after we won. They wanted us to put that together, which we did, and they loved it. It was kind of like our residents were at the chamber event.”
Urzua said Potter Ridge donated a cake for the chamber’s cake contest, and, while the residents were around while staff were first putting the cake together, pictures of the cake were printed out for the residents to see at the party. She said, “They just love looking at it.” The center had also decorated a table at the chamber event, which was recreated at the party for residents, who Urzua said “were really excited to see that.”
For more information about Potter Ridge Senior Living, visit potterridge.com
This article is part of a weekly series featuring each of the Red Wing Area Chamber of Commerce 2023 award winners.
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