The Rochester City Council held a study session on February 10, 2025, from 3:30 p.m. to 6:19 p.m. (local time). The session included three presentations: an update on the Supporting Transformation initiative, the Rochester Vision 2050 community visioning project, and proposed improvements to Peace Plaza. No formal votes were taken, as this was a study session, but future council actions were identified.
Welcome to our February 10th 2025 Rochester City Council study session. We have three items on our agenda tonight. One is supporting transformation update that I think Cindy's going to lead, and then we'll turn it over to the mayor on a presentation on our Rochester Vision 2050 update. And then I think it's back to Cindy on the heart of the city peace plaza improvement. I just want to also add that immediately after our study session today, we will take a break and then we will convene in room 104 a special session of the city council. We will then immediately go into closed session. So and I will repeat that at the end of our study session here. Cindy, take it away. Thank you, Council President Shubring, Mayor Norton, members of the city council, Cindy Steinhauser, Deputy City Administrator. Excited to be here with you this evening to or this afternoon to provide an update on our supporting transformation. Also with me are two members of our key partner organizations, Aaron Sexton from Mayo Clinic and Jamie Rothi from Destination Medical Center, who is talking to me right now, but we'll be in shortly to also be available to answer questions at the end of my presentation. So just want to do some context setting as we talk about coming with you before you with an update on supporting transformation, and to remind you and those watching at home that what we're talking about is unprecedented level of investment in Rochester over the next five to seven years. When we realize not only what's happening in the public sector with the work that we're doing with a lot of projects I'm going to mention in a few minutes, but also what's happening in the private sector. And so these are just some of the things that are informing the things that have passed here recently or announcements that have passed in the last year or so that are informing this transformation, uh transformational investment in Rochester and in the state of Minnesota. Um obviously the biggest of that is Mayo Bold Forward Unbound, their five billion dollar investment, but it doesn't just stop there, right? We have seen uh we continue to break levels uh records um in the last number of years over commercial investment in Rochester. Um so what's roughly Mayo Bold for one and bound, obviously five billion dollar project in a roughly 35 square block area, so adjacent and in the heart of downtown, so very tight geographic area where uh a lot of this work is happening, but there's also a lot happening throughout the rest of downtown in our community, uh not only with Link BRT with the West Transit Village Redevelopment with Sixth Street Riverfront Bridge and Neighborhood Safety and Connectivity, um work at Silver Lake, work that we're doing on South Broadway. There's a lot of infrastructure and public component projects happening that are also part of that transformation story. Um again, just to reminder when we think about Mayo's investment in this community. It is truly the largest project the state of Minnesota has seen. It's almost double what was the largest projects the state of Minnesota had seen about a year ago with the improvements at the airport. And so thinking about that, um, as partners, we came together to say when we to develop what we're calling guiding principles. They're in your packet. Uh these are a draft guiding principles, and we did this because we said there's a lot of work happening uh not only by us, not only by our partners, but the rest of the private sector. And so understanding and developing uh a set of guiding principles to align our efforts and to think about um what is our North Star and what we want to achieve as we work together with these improvements. And so they're in these five different buckets that uh we want to talk about but to uh or that we want to show, but today I want to talk about um and emphasize the work that we're doing in three of these guiding principle areas. What we're doing around um the principle that we call providing the best experience possible through construction and really key for you to understand um some of the things that are informing this principle are things like optimizing and aligning schedules across our projects to minimize disruption to the community, right? We're not gonna get it right every single time, but to if we have this goal of trying to minimize disruption uh as our at the forefront of our work, it's really really important. Thinking about intuitive and creative approaches to wayfinding and movement around these construction areas, thinking about our business forward model and having that solutions-oriented approach, thinking about immediate needs, but always with that eye towards the future. What is it that we want to deliver at the end of all of this work? Connectivity is another guiding principle to talk about today. And again, this is thinking about connections to the neighborhoods through downtown, thinking about connectivity, not only at grade systems, but we have a subway and we have Skyway, and how does wayfinding and signage come into play? How do we think about technology informing that? You're going to hear me talk about high-tech and high touch, right? There's a people component and there's a technology component that we can use to our advantage in guiding this work. And then communications and engagement. I actually was thinking afterwards I should have inserted the IAP2 spectrum of engagement because engagement goes from everything from informed to fully engage. There's five layers to engagement and all are appropriate at different points of time in this work. Some it is literally just to inform, some is help walk alongside us in design. But what we also want to talk about with communication is engagement is that it's timely, it's actionable, and it's coordinated across not only our organizations, but across the audiences that we need to deliver the information to that it's ongoing, that it's meaningful, it's meeting people where they're at. So they you and your constituents have the information they need to understand what's going on in Rochester during this time. So let's first talk about providing the best experience possible through construction. And you know, we're not in this journey alone. Like we have five major partners helping us, walking with us in this journey, whether not only Mayo Clinic and DMC, but also downtown Rochester Inc., RDA, the Chamber of Commerce, Experience Rochester, and Ready. These are the organizations that also make up the downtown task force, and we are at the table in regular conversations and action about making sure that we provide the best experience possible through construction. When we talk about construction coordination, right? That's that's at very basic level we're talking about here is how are we coordinating all of this work happening in this tight geographic area. It's really about how do we deliver solutions. And for us, some of the tools are things like business forward, it's a good communications and engagement strategy. It's thinking about creative solutions, it's about process improvement.