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STAR TRIBUNE EXCLUSIVE Y ON LY IN YOU R SU N DAY PAPER SURGE IN SENIORS WILL RESHAPE STATE Look no further than Roseville for a glimpse of our graying future By MARY JANE SMETANKA' smetan@startribune.com JJoyce and John Goedeke were in their 70s when they left the Roseville home they had occupied for almost 50 years and moved into a senior co-op. John died last year, and Joyce no longer drives. But everything she needs—restaurants, a clinic, dentist, grocery store, pharmacy, dry cleaners, bakery and more— is within a 10-minute walk of her apartment at Greenhouse Village on Larpenteur Avenue. If she needs to go further, the bus stop is just half a block from her front door. "It's wonderful," she said of the place she now calls home. Luck and planning have positioned Roseville well for its graying future. It's a place where nearly one in four residents is over 64, giving it the oldest population in the Twin Cities and making it one of the five oldest U.S. cities outside the Sun Belt. Yet even as it ages gracefully, Roseville is facing new strains and dilemmas: City officials worry about attracting young families, funding services for seniors and making sure that elderly residents are safe in their homes. Those challenges will soon turn up all across Minnesota, as the state races toward the same silverhaired fate. The number of Minnesotans over 64 will double by 2035. The number in their 80s will grow even faster. By 2020, for the first time in the state's history, pensioners will outnumber schoolchildren. "It's going to affect everything," said Tom Gillaspy, the state demographer. "Big shifts are occurring, and things that have never happened before in this country." Will Minnesota be ready? Imagine a state where retirees reject school referendums to protect their limited incomes from higher property taxes. Where big houses stand vacant in third-ring suburbs. Where communities raze schools instead of building them —and devote the space to senior apartments. Where nursing home costs crowd out road construction and higher education on the state's list of priorities. When Craig Klausing was growing up in Roseville in the 1960s, the city swarmed with children. "There were streams of kids at houses on Halloween. It was almost like, 'Take a number,' " said Klausing, who is Roseville's mayor today. "Now if we have 10 or 20 kids we think we've had a good night on Halloween." Today Roseville has more residents over age 75 than under age 10. The city has converted part of a school into a senior center. The city newsletter to residents is printed in large type. There's one high school instead of two, and the number of schools has dwindled from 16 to 10. Flipping through the member directory at the Church of St. Odilia, parishioner Roger Toogood points to pictures of white-haired widows and older couples. "This used to be full of pictures of families," he said. Just inside St. Odilia's front door are wheelchairs and walkers, ready for use. More than half of the church's nearly 3,200 households are age 55 or above. "We are the oldest we've ever been," said the Rev. Phil Rask. " St. Odilia's new priorities, set in consultation with members, include some radical possibilities: hiring a nurse to help parishioners find medical and social services; starting a senior day care service; and converting a vacant eightbedroom residence on church grounds into a hospice. Rask thinks the church will draw a younger congregation as local homes turn over, but he accepts where St. Odilia is now. "We have to talk to these people and ask what they need, not what we think they need," he said. At Roseville's southern edge, the Rev. Dave Smith of Rose Hill Alliance Church takes a similar view. His congregation of 250 includes a vital group of seniors who literally built the church with their own hands in 1967. While the church is becoming increasingly diverse—there are young