Mayo Clinic on Monday announced a large redevelopment of its main campus in downtown Rochester, Minnesota, two weeks after the health system’s threats to scrap investment in the state led to changes in a nurse staffing bill.
Minnesota legislators removed a provision to enforce nurse staffing levels after Mayo Clinic officials said they would pull billions of dollars in investments unless the proposal was thrown out or an exemption was provided for the health system.
Key details of the redevelopment, including its cost and timeline, were not announced.
Mayo Clinic isn’t sharing a total cost because it doesn’t have board approval for the entire project and investment, said Dr. Craig Daniels, physician leader of the “Bold. Forward. Unbound. in Rochester” initiative. Daniels said the health system is seeking board approval by the end of the year, with construction planned to start in 2024.The nonprofit system’s board recently approved related projects, including several site redevelopments to house clinical and ancillary services.
Mayo Clinic is seeking the city’s approval to redevelop the former Lourdes High School site, which the system said is largely unusable due to asbestos and flood damage, and construct a logistics building for support services. The health system purchased the site in 2013.
“We recognize that now is the time to reexamine our campus as a whole, look at our built facilities and decide if we continue to invest at the edge of our enlarging campus, or if it’s really a better strategy to take a pause on that 100-year strategy of ‘building buildings attached to other buildings’ and saying now is really the time to reinvest at the center of our practice,” Daniels said.
Mayo Clinic, with 76,000 employees, also has major campuses in Phoenix; Scottsdale, Arizona; and Jacksonville, Florida, plus international operations. The system generated $420 million in first-quarter net income, signaling a possible rebound from a steep drop in profits for 2022.
