Twin City Gardens Care Center, a former nursing home at 2309 Hayes St. NE, was placed into receivership in 2021 due to unpaid bills and poor resident care. It has been sold for $550,000. (Cynthia Sowden)
The abandoned nursing home at 2309 Hayes St. NE has been sold.
Jon Haworth, of Keller Williams Realty, confirmed that a local investor had signed a purchase agreement for the property on Wednesday, May 27. The building’s asking price was $799,000. It was purchased for $550,000. After due diligence, closing would occur around July 1.
It’s been five years since the Minnesota Department of Health placed the nursing home into receivership due to poor care of its residents and unpaid bills (“MDH takes control of Northeast nursing home,” Northeaster, Nov. 4, 2021) and four since the department shut it down completely. In that time, the building, built in 1960, has become a playground for young “urban explorers.”
“It’s insane, the number of people who have gone into this empty building,” Haworth said. “They climb the trees to get onto the roof. They’re putting their lives in danger.
I was there last week and there were four kids in the building. They had busted a kitchen window to get in. When I told them to leave, they told me, ‘Just chill, bro.’” He called the police.
The building has gone from having a leaky roof and moldy interior walls to broken windows, missing copper pipes, a graffiti-covered interior and exterior and an empty elevator shaft. A statue was taken from the garden and thrown off the roof, according to Windom Park resident Laura Gurda, who has been monitoring its destruction during daily walks.
New York-based owner Hayes Senior Living Property Co. has been cited 89 times since July 2022 for failure to maintain its property. The company has purportedly hired security. However, the City of Minneapolis has been on the hook for removing rubbish and vegetation, and the Minneapolis Police Department closed the first-floor windows by attaching heavy metal sheets to the window frames.
An aerial photo taken between 1920 and 1930 shows the Aaron Carlson home (left) adjacent to the old Pillsbury School. (Hennepin County Library)
When Hayes Senior Living purchased the property in 2023, the sale price was $6.5 million. Its taxable market value has since declined to $2.3 million, according to Hennepin County’s property search website. Had the property gone into forfeiture (it’s listed as pending on July 8 on the Hennepin County property website), it could have been purchased for as little as the sum of its delinquent taxes and special assessments.
Bethany Covenant Home started in 1929 when Aaron Carlson, owner of the Aaron Carlson millwork company, donated his home and the land around it for a nursing home. When more space was needed, the house was demolished and a new building was constructed in 1960.
The new owner wants to use the building for multi-family housing, Haworth said. “They’ll have to do about $5 million worth of work” to bring the property back up to code.
