$5 million renovation to clear the way for Mayo Clinic employees to move to northwest Rochester

Jeff Kiger, Post-Bulletin, Rochester, Minn.
·2 min read

Oct. 4—ROCHESTER — As local building leases lapse,

Mayo Clinic

is spending almost $5 million to renovate one of its facilities to shift an unknown number of employees to northwest Rochester.

Mayo Clinic recently applied for a series of building permits to upgrade its complex at 4111 U.S. Highway 52 NW on its

41st Street Professional Campus

. That building also houses the Mayo Family Clinic Northwest. The permit detailed the reason for the work.

"Consolidate programs and services from North Broadway and Valley High sites due to lease expirations and services Superior Drive Center due to lab expansions," according to the permit application.

The main permit values the project at $4.5 million, while a secondary mechanical permit adds $172,000 more to the cost.

In response to questions about the project, Mayo Clinic spokeswoman Kelley Luckstein wrote, "Mayo Clinic is remodeling areas of the 41st Street Professional East Building to relocate multiple groups and expand clinical space in 2023. These groups will relocate from various sites in Rochester and will benefit from the opportunity to co-locate with existing clinical functions."

Mayo Clinic did not respond to questions about how many employees are being moved to the 41st Street Campus or which Rochester building leases are expiring.

This is part of

a strategy that Mayo Clinic's Chair of Facilities Doug Holtan discussed

in July 2021.

"We're also assessing how we are using our campus as we freed up space from those that are working remotely primarily," he said in 2021. "As we have leases coming up for renewals in the next one to two years, we will be looking very hard at not renewing those leases in the short term."

This reworking of the 41st Street campus is the latest milestone in the property that was built for IBM by Minneapolis-based

M. A. Mortenson Co.

, which is also the developer of Rochester's Discovery Square complexes.

The 41st Street complexes, previously known as the

IBM White Buildings

, were built in phases by Mortenson in the 1980s. The buildings once housed hundreds of IBM employees overflowing from the adjacent

"Blue Zoo" campus

.

By 2004, a dramatically reduced IBM had pulled all employees from the buildings. Mortenson handed the massive property over to its mortgage lender, New York Life Insurance Co., in 2010.

In 2016,

Mayo Clinic paid $10 million

for the three buildings spanning a total of 435,000-square-feet.

"The investment will allow for consolidation of certain administrative, clinical, educational and research functions that do not need to be in the proximity of downtown. This will then open up space downtown to expand various functions that are critical to the downtown area," wrote Luckstein in 2016 of the acquisition.