Month: August 2016

Experience PlaceMakers | Rochester Prototyping Festival 2016

This September, the landscape of downtown Rochester will take on a new look when sixteen larger-than-life urban prototypes are put into place.

placemakers-logo-red-w-date250PlaceMakers | Rochester Prototyping Festival will take place from Thursday, September 15 through Saturday, September 17. The event is a collaboration of Destination Medical Center, the Rochester Art Center, and the Rochester Downtown Alliance and is a unique effort to engage local designers, artists, and community members in remaking of some of Rochester’s public spaces.

Destination Medical Center Corporation Board Takes Major Step Forward on Heart of the City

ROCHESTER, Minn. (August 25, 2016) – At today’s board meeting, the Destination Medical Center (DMC) Corporation Board of Directors took a major step forward on DMC’s Heart of the City sub-district by approving the recommendation of the Heart of the City Community Advisory Committee to select RSP Architects as the design team for public space in Heart of the City. The DMC Corporation Board also was updated on the latest progress of the Discovery Square sub-district and transportation.

“The Heart of the City district is an essential part of our strategy to ensure Rochester’s place as America’s City for Health,” said Lt. Governor Tina Smith, DMC Corporation Board Chair. “It will be the place where Mayo Clinic, medical innovation, new business and hospitality opportunities, and housing choices all meet. Today’s announcement takes us a step closer to this goal.”

Following the meeting, the DMC Corporation Board toured the recently reopened Conley-Maass Building located in Discovery Square and met with the building’s tenants and collaborators.

Minneapolis / St. Paul Business Journal: Harbor Bay makes $5.5M bet on downtown Rochester

Harbor Bay Real Estate Advisors, the firm behind a 26-story tower project near the University of Minnesota has bought a restaurant
building near the heart of Rochester’s Destination Medical Center.

Finance & Commerce reports on the $5.5 million deal for the former Michael’s Restaurant building at 15 S. Broadway Ave. The site is at Center Street West and South Broadway, about two blocks from Rochester’s Mayo Clinic.

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Collider Core: A hub for local entrepreneurs

Located downtown in Rochester’s historic Conley-Maass Building, Collider Core recently opened its doors for business.

1470694328739The co-working hub can be found in DMC’s Discovery Square sub-district and is designed to provide both fledgling and established entrepreneurs with a unique environment where they can work, connect, and learn.

Collider founder Jamie Sundsbak explains the difference between Collider and Collider Core. “Collider is the entrepreneurial ecosystem – think BioAM, but for all entrepreneurship in the Rochester area,” he explains. “Core is the physical hub – a hybrid of a traditional coworking and business incubator space.” In short, Core provides the Collider community with its operating space.

Heart of the City: Where healthcare meets hospitality

Progress continued in the Heart of the City today as the Community Advisory Committee made its recommendation for the team charged with designing the DMC sub-district’s public space.

HeartOfTheCityThat recommendation is RSP Architects, a Minneapolis-based architectural firm with offices in Rochester, Phoenix, and other locations, and includes Coen Partners (Twin Cities), which will serve as lead landscape architect; 9.Square (Rochester), which will provide urban design, architecture, planning, and community engagement; HR&A Advisors (New York), which will provide open space development, management, and strategy services; and Kimley-Horn (St. Paul and Rochester), which will provide civil engineering, transportation, and DMC plan continuity.

Post-Bulletin: Panel recommends Heart of City design firm

A commitment to dream and a promise to inspire won RSP Architects a recommendation from a public advisory body to lead public space design in the Destination Medical Center sub-district Heart of the City.

The Heart of the City Community Advisory Committee on Monday interviewed representatives from three design firms to advance the vision of Heart of the City, a public space that is centered on Rochester’s Peace Plaza.

The committee agreed to recommend a design team led by RSP Architects, of Minneapolis. The recommendation will be reviewed by the Destination Medical Center Corp. Board of Directors and the Rochester City Council for final approval. The DMC Corp. board meets next on Aug. 25 and the council will consider the recommendation at its Sept. 7 meeting.

ABC 6 News: New Business Incubator Opens in Rochester

A hub for local entrepreneurs opened its doors Monday in Downtown Rochester. “Collider Core” gives novice and seasoned entrepreneurs a place to work and connect with each other. There are conference rooms, dedicated workspaces and help finding community resources to launch their business.

“I think its super important that what’s happening with DMC we have these sort of hubs to engage the entrepreneurial community in fact that’s why we called it Collider, we wanted these sort of random collisions to happen with people to get them successful,” Community Manager Jamie Sundsbak explains.

The business incubator is already looking to the future and aims to fill space in the DMC’s Discovery Square going forward.

Star Tribune: Redoing Rochester: Where has investment for the DMC gone so far?

It’s going to take a lot of money to redo Rochester, but that’s the bold aim of a Mayo Clinic project known as Destination Medical Center.

The DMC, begun in 2013, will see Mayo expand its campus as the city of Rochester invests in new infrastructure to support more employees, more patients and more businesses. By 2033, when the plan turns 20, the city should be a shining example of public-private partnership and an international hub for health care, research and medicine. That’s the plan.

So how much money does it need? Mayo officials say they will invest $3 billion over the DMC’s lifetime, and expect to court an additional $2.1 billion in private investment.

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Flats on 4th: Coming soon to the DMC district

As the Destination Medical Center economic development initiative takes off, so has Rochester’s housing market.

Case in point: new mixed-use apartment complexes are under construction in or on the outskirts of the DMC district which include Flats on 4th, Lofts at Mayo Clinic, 501, and 1st Avenue Lofts.

DMC Executive Director Lisa Clarke said these projects demonstrate that investors and developers see promise in Rochester’s future.

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Flats on 4th rendering

“If you want to measure the DMC’s momentum, just look at how many construction trucks and hard hats you see around the city,” said Clarke. “Every groundbreaking represents progress toward our ultimate goal, which is to transform Rochester not only into a health and wellness destination for patients, but a place that attracts talented, diverse workers from all over the world.”