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 magazine's list of the best places to live, ranging from the best overall to the best in the Midwest.

Nestled in a valley, Rochester's 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 city's 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 100,000, 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 state's 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 Rochester's 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 city's employers include a variety of high-tech companies, from a major IBM plant on the city's 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

Economy

Even in the face of a difficult U.S. economy, the Rochester area's business community remains strong. A steady increase in population within the Rochester MSA has resulted in the continual growth and diversification of the area's labor force. It is estimated that the Rochester MSA has access to a labor pool of some 150,000 people. Rochester also benefits from the 45 two-and four-year institutions of higher learning located within a 90-mile radius. Students enrolled in any one of these colleges or universities often seek employment opportunities within this region post-graduation.

Service businesses reign supreme in the Rochester area, a sector anchored by the Mayo Clinic - a state's largest employer, with more than 31,500 employees. Olmsted Medical Center is also a top employer with 1,000-plus employees. The service industry accounts for approximately 83 percent of the area's employment. Hospitality is the second-largest industry, followed by agriculture, which is represented by 1,400 working farms in Olmsted County. Education, government, retail and manufacturing also have a significant impact in the local economy, as does the technology and bio-business industries.

Technology

Several well-known technology-based businesses have chosen this Midwest region as their home, establishing Rochester as a major center for technology. IBM Rochester stands as the area's second largest employer and the state's largest information technology employer. Rochester was chosen as the site for a new manufacturing, engineering and educational complex in 1956, occupying 3.6 million square feet, making it the largest IBM facility under one contiguous roof.

The main mission of IBM Rochester is to develop, manufacture and support IBM eServer business computers. Site employees also participate in software development for a number of IBM products, such as the Roadrunner - a product that earned recognition as the world's most powerful supercomputer. IBM Rochester continues its innovation streak, garnering the most U.S. patents of any company across the globe.

In addition to IBM, Rochester also hosts Benchmark Electronics, Inc., an electronics manufacturing services provider; Kardia Health Systems, a medical software and service provider, and Metafile Information System Inc., a developer of management software applications.

BioBusiness

With the presence of the Mayo Clinic, the Minnesota Partnership for Biotechnology and Medical Genomics, the University of Minnesota Rochester's Hormel Institute, IBM's Life Sciences Research and Development Lab and others, biobusiness is an industry poised for significant growth in Rochester. The Minnesota BioBusiness Center, an initiative of the city of Rochester and Rochester Area Economic Development, Inc. (RAEDI), has a mission to draw new biotechnology and medical jobs to Minnesota and the City of Rochester. The modern downtown-based facility was completed in early spring 2009 and is anchored by the Mayo Foundation for Medical Education and Research's Office of Intellectual Property.

Economic Development

Rochester Area Economic Development, Inc. (RAEDI) is an important resource for existing and potential businesses in the Rochester area. RAEDI works to attract new businesses, retain existing businesses and facilitate thoughtful growth and expansion in the Rochester area. In the last 10 years, the organization has assisted well over 100 businesses to develop and execute their business plans, has generated more than $2 billion in new local economic activity and has created nearly 5,000 jobs. Services rendered through RAEDI include financial packaging, business planning, site location support and business and community advocacy.

RAEDI administers the RAEDI SEED/Venture Fund for qualifying businesses relocating, expanding or starting up in the Rochester area. The State of Minnesota also offers a number of development incentives, including Tax Increment Financing (TIF), Industrial Development Revenue Bonds, Minnesota Investment Fund, the Minnesota Investment Fund, the Minnesota Jobs Skills Partnership and the Jobz project. Other resources providing financial assistance for economic development in Rochester include the Initiative Foundation and Southeastern Minnesota 504 Development, Inc.

Workforce 2020

With an increasing population of baby boomers set to retire in the next few decades, the need to incorporate younger, high -skilled employees in those future vacated jobs becomes more evident. To remain competitive in the ever-changing global economy of today and tomorrow, these future leaders require innovative education and workforce development opportunities.

Workforce 2020 is an ambitious initiative, led by a coalition comprised of the Rochester Area Chamber of Commerce, Rochester Area Foundation, Rochester Area Economic Development, Inc., the Department of Employment and Economic Development, Inc., the Department of Employment and Economic Development and other community partners. This advanced community think tank researches and encourages the incorporation of new, pioneering ideas for education and workforce development.

The alliance is currently a participant in When Work Works, an initiative that responds to the challenges of an aging workforce by sharing research and best practice ideas for managing effectively and responsively. The Diversity In Business initiative promotes opportunities for women and minority-owned businesses, while the Business Learning Network encourages professional growth and offers tools for recruiting and retaining employees in the 21st century.

Workforce 2020 also invests in various educational strategies geared towards young students and teachers. Among the initiatives is First Steps, an early childhood education program; the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering & Math) educational initiative, a program promoting advanced coursework in the said areas of study; Learn.Do.Earn., a web-based program designed to improve students' educational careers and better prepare them for college, employment and real world living; and the Educators In the Workplace Institute, a three-day workshop for area teachers created to instill a stronger connection between educators and local businesses.

Learn more about Workforce 2020 and its groundbreaking strategies online at www.rochestermnchamber.com.

More about the Rochester Area

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 area's 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 Benchmark Electronics typically have between 450 and 600 workers at any one time. The city is actively seeking commercial and industrial development to grow jobs.

Rochester MSA's Major Employers (updated May 2011)

Established	Name	Employees	Business Type
1914	Mayo Clinic	32,000	Medical/Hospital
1911	IBM	N/A	Electronics-Computer
1868	Rochester Public Schools	2,144	Education Services
1855	Olmsted County	1,177	Government
1949	Olmsted Medical Center	1,063	Medical/Hospital Services
1970	McNeilus Truck & Manuf.	850	Mobile concrete mixers, garbage trucks
1858	City of Rochester	834	Local Government
1993	Charter Communications	690	Cable Television/High Speed Internet
1951	Crenlo	640	Fabricated Metal
1917	Interstate Hotels & Resorts	590	Hotel/Restaurant Services
1915	RCTC	500	Post Secondary Education
1984	Federal Medical Center	460	Corrections/Medical
1949	Seneca Food (255 regular)	450 (seasonal)	Food Processing
1994	Benchmark Electronics	420	Contract Mfg/Design/Engineering
1976	Hiawatha Homes	380	Res. Services/Dev. Disabilities
1922	Samaritan Bethany, Inc.	360	Health Care of the Aging
1928	Kemps	345	Food Processing
1970	Pace Dairy	320	Food Processing
1912	Schmidt Printing	300	Printing/Publishing
1855	Rochester Post Office	269	Postal/Delivery Service
1961	Think Bank	260	Banking
1971	Rochester Meat Company	250	Meat Processor
1948	McNeilus Steel, Inc.	243	Steel Fabrication
1971	Rochester Medical Corp	232	Medical Device Manufacturer
1965	Lawrence Transportation Co.	230	Refrigerated over-the-road trucking
1978	Halcon	226	Furniture Manufacturer
1877	Rochester Catholic Schools	207	Education Services
1956	Ability Building Center (600 with clients)	200 (staff only)	Rehabilitation Services
1859	Post Bulletin Company	187	Printing/Publishing
2003	Home Instead Senior Care	165	Home Care Services
1934	Home Federal Savings Bank	161	Banking
1852	Wells Fargo	160	Banking
1972	Child Care Resource & Referral	160	Child Care Oversight
1966	Zumbro Valley Mental Health	150	Human Services
1982	Superior Mechanical Systems	125	Air Conditioning, Refrigeration, Heating
1964	Tuohy Furniture	115	Wood Office Furniture Manufacturer
1938	Pepsi-Cola Bottling Co.	112	Distribution Center
1941	Assoc. Milk Producers	100	Food Processing
1976	Himec	92	Plumbing Contractor