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Rochester, Minnesota Community

In 2004, Rochester celebrated its 150th birthday. The city now is the state’s third-largest and has been recognized as one of the best places to live in the United States. Olmsted County celebrated its 150th in 2005. Since the 1980s, Rochester has frequently made Money magazine¹s list of the best places to live, ranging from the best overall to the best in the Midwest.

Nestled in a valley, Rochester¹s skyline has a foreground of farm fields with tall buildings thrusting into the sky. Despite its cosmopolitan appearance, one of the favorable features marking the city¹s status as a great place to live is short commute times, an average of 14 minutes and the shortest of the nation’s 300 largest cities.

Rochester, with a population of more than 90,000, isn’t a tiny town. It encompasses nearly 40 square miles and 100 parks - that’s nearly three city parks per square mile! - and continues to grow. In fact, it is one of the state¹s fastest-growing municipalities.

Minnesota has a reputation as a frozen northern state, but Rochester enjoys an average of 200 sunny days, an average summer high temperature of 84 degrees, and an average winter low of 3 degrees ‹ hardly the frozen tundra.

If the weather does take a turn for the worse, the downtown core boasts what is probably the most extensive subway-skyway system for a city of Rochester¹s size in the nation.

Averaging 1.5 million visitors a year, largely attracted to Mayo Clinic for medical care, the city offers an extensive service industry. It also is a regional magnet for shoppers, drawing people from northern Iowa and southwestern Wisconsin.

During the summer, its farmers market brings together a wide range of producers, including those from Wisconsin and Iowa, offering a diverse selection of fresh produce, meats, and fish, many certified organic.

In addition to Mayo Clinic, the city¹s employers include a variety of high-tech companies, from a major IBM plant on the city¹s northwestern edge to medium-sized and small-sized producers of computer hardware and software.

Agri-business, including a cannery and three dairy processors, is big here, all fed by farms in the Rochester area.

There are a wide variety of places to go and things to do from art and artistry to the outdoors.

Education is important in Rochester. A fine school system offers quality primary and secondary education for youngsters, as do a number of parochial and private schools.

Higher education offerings range from vocational-technical classes to undergraduate and graduate college programs in a number of areas including education, health care, business, and engineering.

Why does Rochester continue to grow and prosper? Because it city offers so many things to so many people.

For more information about healthcare, entertainment, shopping, dining, moving or visiting in Rochester, Minnesota, go to www.rochestermn.com

Rochester Area’s Economy

Rochester, Minnesota’s robust economy relies upon several strong foundations: Mayo Clinic, IBM, agriculture, and the hospitality industry that serves visitors to the city.

 “Rochester’s strong point is the people who live and work to make our community what it is today, the ‘can do’ attitude that prevails is the catalyst for the ongoing progress and visioning for our future”, said Mayor Ardell F. Brede.

Mayo Clinic is the largest employer in Rochester and one of the largest private employers in Minnesota. It employs more than 28,000 workers at its Rochester operation. Mayo indirectly supports an additional 40,000 jobs in the state. It is a Fortune 100 best place to work company.

IBM-Rochester adds it own strong foundation to Rochester’s economy. Its local employment stands at a current level of 4,400. IBM¹s Blue Gene/L, being developed at the Rochester facility, last fall made international news by becoming No. 1 on the TOP 500 super computers list. In a world where speed is paramount, Blue Gene leads the pack with a theoretical peak computing rate of 367 teraFLOP/s. And, Blue Gene will be doubled in size before the next TOP 500 list is released in November.

The third largest industry in Olmsted County is agriculture. About 60 percent of the half-million acres in the county are farmland with nearly 1,400 working farms. Local agribusiness includes vegetable, milk and whey processing, and cheese and ice cream production.

Associated Milk Producers Inc., and Kemps LLC produce dairy products on a national scale and Pace Dairy Food Co. locally processes million of pounds of cheese each year. Kemps, formerly Marigold Foods, is owned by HP Hood of Chelsea, Mass., the second-largest, full-line dairy processing company in the country. Combined sales exceed $3 billion a year.

Vegetable packing, primarily peas and corn, provides hundreds of seasonal jobs each summer at Seneca Foods. About 97,000 acres is devoted to corn and grain production in the county.

 Service businesses, ranging from the enormous Mayo Clinic to tiny single-office firms, together accounted for 81 percent of the area¹s jobs in 2000.

The hospitality industry is another major economic force in the city. The city provides nearly 5,000 hotel rooms to serve the more than one million national and international visitors each year.           

The city can count nearly 150 manufacturing firms in the Rochester area. Together, their payrolls exceed $67 million annually, according to RAEDI. Among firms in this category, Crenlo Inc., a metal enclosure maker, and electronics manufacturer Pemstar typically have between 750 and 1,000 workers at any one time.

The city is actively seeking commercial and industrial development to grow jobs.

For more information about healthcare, entertainment, shopping, dining, moving or visiting in Rochester, Minnesota, go to www.rochestermn.com

Rochester’s Major Employers