University of Minnesota Rochester embarks on new master plan for downtown campus

Matthew Stolle, Post-Bulletin, Rochester, Minn.
Updated ·3 min read

Sep. 13—ROCHESTER — The University of Minnesota Rochester is expected to begin work this fall with a facilities consultant to chart the next phase of growth for the downtown campus, a new master plan that will have large implications for the downtown.

UMR leaders were planning to meet Wednesday afternoon with officials from Sasaki, an architecture and urban design firm, for a kickoff of a months-long collaboration that will lead to the development of a new plan. The product will then be presented to the University of Minnesota Board of Regents in May for approval, said University of Minnesota Chancellor Lori Carrell.

"This is an opportunity to just explore all options," Carrell said. "What we do know is, we'll be in downtown Rochester. We're committed to doing things creatively and differently. And we want to do that with partners in a way that contributes to the Rochester community."

It will be the first UMR plan developed in a decade. And whatever emerges in terms of a plan for UMR's future growth will

supplant a 2014 plan that envisioned a campus

in the southwest part of the downtown east of Soldiers Memorial Field Park. But that plan never survived contact with reality.

After many years of buying up property in that area of the downtown,

UMR was on the verge of launching a building project with the YMCA,

complete with a housing and classroom complex and a well-being center. But then, the

Y shuttered its facility during the pandemic,

and

the UMR plan never got off the ground.

Sasaki has been working with all of the University of Minnesota campuses to develop plans, but unlike those other campuses, the nearly 1,000-student UMR campus expects to grow and to need more space and infrastructure.

"We're really thrilled to have the consultant coming, because it does take considerable analysis to redo that comprehensive campus plan. Things have changed dramatically since 2014," Carrell said in an interview last April.

Asked if elements of the 2014 plan will be incorporated into the new one, Carrell said, "I imagine so, but we're not limiting ourselves at the beginning of this process."

Carrell said the school plans to hold "public events and campus events" to raise awareness about the proposal that Sasaki will help plan and guide.

The development of a new campus plan comes even as some regents are urging the health care-focused school to aim higher and be more aggressive in its growth plans.

"I look at Minnesota still hemorrhaging a couple of thousand students a year, more going out than coming in for higher education," said University of Minnesota Board of Regent Darrin Rosha said at a meeting last February. "We could solve the problem just at that campus."

Since

establishing itself in a downtown mall by converting the top two floors into a school,

UMR has continued to grow through leasing and partnerships with Rochester business leaders, including the late Gus Chafoulias and his son, Andy Chafoulias, and Hal Henderson and Grant Michaletz.

Today, UMR is a sprawling entity through the downtown and includes Galleria at University Square mall, 318 Commons apartments, and classrooms and labs in Discovery Square One and Two.

And this year,

it opened a new, 400-student residential facility

by converting the DoubleTree in downtown Rochester into a Student Life Center.