on Dec 17, 2020

Guiding Destination Medical Center’s Long-Term Strategy Through COVID-19 Recovery Modeling

Amid the largest economic shock in generations, public officials and private investors need to understand how the economic fallout is playing out locally to make informed decisions about investments, policies, and resources required to best position cities for future recovery and growth. HR&A recently assisted Rochester’s Destination Medical Center (DMC) – a public-private partnership that includes the City of Rochester, the Mayo Clinic, and the State of Minnesota – as it updated its 20-year economic development plan to integrate post-pandemic economic projections into its investment strategy.
 
The DMC’s 20-year plan spells out critical planning and investment decisions in Downtown Rochester, including demand for housing, office, hotel, retail, and other uses – this makes understanding the pace and nature of recovery central to decision-making. To guide planning, HR&A first contextualized how the economic shock in downtown Rochester has compared with national trends based on its unique drivers of activity, including medical tourism and R&D, and then projected economic recovery scenarios informed by precedent pandemics and how public health measures are likely to impact those activity drivers. These projections are being used to inform economic policies and investments in the years ahead.
 
See HR&A’s detailed analysis of recovery scenarios here

See HR&A’s Analysis and the full DMC plan here