Discovery Walk

A multipurpose, public space that will connect the Heart of the City & Mayo Clinic with Discovery Square & Soldiers Memorial Field.

What is Discovery Walk?

Discovery Walk is a linear parkway along 2nd Avenue SW in downtown Rochester that will serve pedestrians as well as vehicle access.

Discovery Walk will connect Heart of the City to Soldier’s Field Park and serve as an extension of the Heart of the City public realm project. It will create a high amenity pedestrian experience while also maintaining flexibility for bike and vehicular access, civic events, and future development.

Discovery Walk Will…

Feel like a park
Be flexible for access + events
Promote health + wellness + innovation
Connect Soldiers Field, Heart of the City, Mayo Clinic, and 2nd Street
Provide a unique program + experience
Be accessible and inclusive to everyone
Support future development

Areal rendering of Discovery walk showing the trees and walking path along the roads

Who Is Involved?

Project Team & Co-designers

Rochester is modeling a new and informed human-centered design process by collaborating with a talented and knowledgable team of local co-designers.

Project Team & Co-designers

Rochester is modeling a new and informed design process by collaborating with a talented and knowledgable team of local co-designers. Communty engagements with the broader community and the stakeholder group have informed the project since it started in 2017.

Represent diverse communities
Develop ideas for inclusive design
Develop ideas for inclusive programming
Ensure accessible and welcoming spaces
Create unique experiences
Create a sense of cultural belonging
Create places that encourage health

Local Co-designers

Wafa Elkhalifa

Krista Jacobson

Laurie Kumferman

Chao Mwatela

Lap Nguyen

Jenny Rho

Jeremy Westrum

Integrated Art by Local Artists

We worked with local artists to integrate art into the design of this project in a fun and unique way.

Local Artists Create Integrated Public Art

The Discovery Walk design team selected three area artists to help incorporate art into the project. The art is intended to be integrated into the design of Discovery Walk, not just an added element. The artists will be able to consult with the design team, community co-designers, and client team for input and feedback during the design process on both concept and technical development.

Zoe Cinel

Originally from Italy, Zoe is an interdisciplinary artist and curator. Her interdisciplinary art practice is relational, participatory, and political and uses art to help people feel ownership of the public sphere, with the ultimate goal to connect them.

Sophia Chai

Shaped by her experience immigrating to the U.S. from South Korea as a teenager as well as years in New York, Sophia’s work often explores these feelings of contradiction, confusion, and ambivalence as a metaphor for that unsettling experience.

Ayub HajiOmar

Ayub is a multicultural artist particularly influenced by his background and travels As an artist, he tries to bridge the gap between the misunderstood and those who try to understand them.

Construction Partners

Benefits for the Rochester Community

Health & Wellness

The network of movement established by Discovery Walk takes a truly multi-faceted approach to health and wellness.

The corridor is designed to promote physical health through movement and cleaner air, while its community-oriented features will benefit mental health thanks to increased human interactions. The city’s economic health has also been considered in the process.

Discovery Walk increases the public space along 2nd Avenue from 2,000 square feet to 60,000 square feet. Much of the new public space comes from a narrowed street and widened sidewalk. It’s spacious enough for two sidewalks, with landscaping and seating areas between them.

These seating cut-outs are designed for impromptu hangouts, even past sunset. Our co-design process revealed a desire for places to gather at night, but many of Rochester’s park spaces lack sufficient lighting. Thanks to artist Sofia Chai, Discovery Walk’s light sources will provide safety and a thoughtful message. The light fixtures along 2nd Ave. vary in height, but stand at the same topographical elevation. According to Chai, this creates “a metaphor for the tenuous relationship between social equality and equity.” Many of the benches will act as sources of light themselves, as they will feature lit-up poems of artist Ayub HajiOmar. In total, the amount of seating in this zone has been increased from 65 linear feet to over 600 linear feet.

The planters in these nodes are raised, which creates a more immersive urban garden experience. On the east side of the street is a planted bio-swale. Stormwater from the roadway will enter and be filtered by the plants before making its way to the Zumbro River. A snowmelt system will be installed under the main sidewalks, which improves accessibility and environmental quality. This was engineered with wheelchair users in mind; it eliminates the wheelchair-inhibiting slush so common on city streets. The snowmelt system also reduces the use of melting salts which are harmful to the environment, and, notably, the plants and water quality of the Zumbro River.

Art by Zoe Cinel, which will invite people to pause and breathe, underscores the point of the proposed 26,000 square feet of landscaping (the corridors previously featured 7,000 square feet).

This immersive corridor of movement will make a walk from the Gonda Building to Soldiers Field a unique experience – one that allows visitors to connect more easily with the growing number of shops, hotels, businesses and restaurants along the way. The noise and air pollution of idling buses will be replaced with cutouts for food trucks and airy walkways. That’s just one example of how Discovery Walk will address Rochester’s economic health and wellness.

A hyperlocal approach to the bidding and RFP processes for Discovery Walk has also benefited the economic wellness of the city. Instead of requesting bids for the project as a whole, the project was parceled out to give smaller contractors the ability to be involved. This has led to more money going to smaller, often woman and minority owned, businesses. The local co-design team, local artists, and other local contributors were also paid for their time and work.

Finally, once completed, Discovery Walk will increase the development potential of the adjacent properties, which benefits the city’s economic health long-term.

Sustainability

Sustainability is a key component of the Discovery Walk design, both environmental and economic.

Environmentally, the Discovery Walk project will plant over 14,000 native grasses and perennials along the walk, and the number of trees will increase from 39 to 143. The fresh aromas of these new plants will replace the noise and air pollution of idling buses of years past.

The benefits of these plants extend below ground, too. Discovery Walk’s stormwater management component ensures that rain, snow, and other water is filtered through root systems before making its way back into the Zumbro watershed.

Throughout most of the city, whenever it rains, snows, or hails, that water winds up draining into gutters, and from there, the Zumbro River. That stormwater hits the river with all the oil and trash it collected along its way. Stormwater coming out of Discovery Walk and its 26,000 square feet of landscaping, however, will be filtered through our plant beds and bioswales before going into the Zumbro watershed. This is a crucial piece of environmental stewardship.

DMC has also been intentional about using local materials. The stone used for landscaping is from the Driftless region, and the wood used on benches is a thermally modified ash. Using ash allows us to repurpose some of the many ash trees that have been felled down due to emerald ash borer disease.

The project also has implications for the sustainability of the city itself. The 100-year utility upgrades (which account for roughly 75% of all costs) ensure there will be enough electricity, clean water, and fiber optic cabling to keep the buildings of today and tomorrow functioning.

The transformation of surface parking lots into buildings with higher tax capacity is another marker of the project’s benefits to the economic sustainability of the city. The increased tax revenue from properties along the route will help offset costs of the project.

In addition to boasting a robust, future-proofed utilities system, the appeal of a four block corridor of experiences adds value for companies coming into the city. As evidenced by One and Two Discovery Square, attractive spaces draw innovative businesses; they show potential businesses that Rochester is a desirable environment to work, live, and play in.

A strategic approach to placement of features has also helped keep costs down, increasing the economic sustainability of the project.

Community Engagement

The success of Discovery Walk depends on prioritizing the inputs and perspectives of those with the most to gain from the project. That makes it an ideal project to pilot DMC’s community co-design process.

This unique engagement process was developed by the DMC-convened City for Health Steering Committee as a way to ensure a representative variety of viewpoints.

The Discovery Walk co-design team included people with mobility challenges, people of color, senior citizens, teenagers, and people of various religious and cultural backgrounds.

Over the span of four studio sessions and three ‘sprints,’ the co-designers and Discovery Walk design team pinpointed community needs within the project. The group examined designs and formulated questions to ask of the community. The questions started out broad: Where does your community go to feel healthy? Which local outdoor spaces do you visit?

The co-designers took those questions, consulted with their respective communities, and brought the feedback to a studio session, where a list of things needing further exploration emerged.

The questions grew more specific as the process continued. By the end, Discovery Walk had a clear set of community project requirements that, if left out of the project, would render it a failure in the communities’ eyes.

Elements like lighting, community shelters, and the slush removal system all came out of the co-design meetings.

We heard that, “when lights shut off at 10 p.m.”, it makes people feel like they should leave a space. This led to various lighting elements in Discovery Walk.

We heard how folks experiencing mobility challenges have found slush and snow a deterrent to going outside in the winter. These comments shaped the inclusion and function of the snow removal system.

Our co-designers were apprised of the ways their input shaped the project as it developed. We consistently asked our designers to show how the emerging themes of the discussion from the co-designers were being translated into design strategies. This allowed co-designers to communicate with their communities as to how the project would take their needs into consideration.

The result is a project that leverages inclusivity to bring forth a more vibrant, cohesive, and approachable downtown. This sets the groundwork for a space the whole community can engage with.

Business Case for Discovery Walk

The business case for Discovery Walk is multifaceted. It aims to support business development, encourage employee retention, and attract residents into the downtown area.

The upgraded infrastructure, walkways, and lighting work to make downtown a more engaging space to inhabit. This facet of Discovery Walk is both community-strengthening and a boon to businesses that need great work environments. Working in a neighborhood with so much to offer makes coming into the office something to look forward to.

As companies compete for employees in the new remote work world, third places are increasingly essential, and Discovery Walk is the kind of third place that makes living and working downtown desirable.

Discovery Walk’s myriad seating and strolling options, cut-outs for food trucks, and other gathering spaces foster meetups and social interactions, a key component for innovation. After all, what spurs innovation more than chance encounters between inquiring minds in a food truck line?

The Discovery Walk project also provides a vision for redevelopment in a district rich with potential. The One Discovery Square building was built to give incoming businesses a place to land, while substantial infrastructure upgrades will support businesses as they grow and build.

These modernizing infrastructure updates are a commitment to keep businesses operating in Rochester for the next 100 years. Built with high-quality materials by local contractors, the area is meant to last, and to encourage success for those smaller contractors. DMC’s commitment to using local contractors is ongoing and intended to increase opportunities for local companies.

All these improvements also lead to a more populated downtown, a dynamic already in full swing. When The People’s Food Co-Op opened in 2013, nearly all its customers arrived in cars. They have noticed a steady increase in foot traffic from residents within walking distance in the years since. Discovery Walk aims to continue this trend.

These elements are not necessarily unique to this project, as Discovery Walk is part of the larger effort to make downtown Rochester more attractive, walkable, and pedestrian-friendly. It works in synergy with the Heart of the City, plans for the Riverfront, and nodes around public transit.

We Broke Ground April 2022

This 2-Year Long Project will utilize the innovative Business Forward Strategy. We work closely with local business and property owners to minimize impact from construction and ensure customers continue to have access to their favorite downtown spots. Look at the phasing the used to keep businesses open and thriving.

Discovery Walk Timeline

Since 2015 the DMCC Board and the City of Rochester have collaborated to create the vision and funding for Discovery Walk to become a reality.

SEASON 1: 2022

PHASE 1: Open to traffic in June
PHASE 2: Open to traffic in July
PHASE 3: Close in May, Open in September
PHASE 4: Close after Phase III is open to traffic. Open late Fall.
PHASE 5: Close when West Sidewalks are open to pedestrian traffic. Complete late Fall.
PHASE 2A: Closed early April – 400 / 500 Block open by October