Google to open office in downtown Rochester

Looking to deepen its ties with Mayo Clinic, Google publicized on Thursday its plans to open a new office space in downtown Rochester.

The office, to be located on the second floor of the Conley-Maass-Downs building, 14 Fourth Street Southwest, will be the tech company’s first physical location in Minnesota.

The announcement of the space comes as Mayo and Google continue to lay the technical groundwork on a long-term partnership designed to improve the delivery of healthcare through cloud computing, data analytics, machine learning, and artificial intelligence.

“Having this new space to facilitate our collaboration will really help us accelerate innovation and help us work toward a shared vision of a data-centric future, which we think can transform patient and care provider experiences and reduce the cost of care,” said Cris Ross, Mayo’s chief information officer, during a press conference on Thursday.

Chris Mueller, a Minnesota native working as software engineer for Google Cloud, will serve as the site lead for the Rochester office.

While he could not provide a firm timeline, Mueller said the goal is to open the office sometime this year, depending on local and state Covid guidelines. Initially, there will be at least “a handful of Googlers” working in the space, with plans to add more staff over time.

The space Google will occupy is now home to Collider Coworking, a nonprofit that offers a shared working environment along with educational programming. With Google moving in, Collider manager Jamie Sundsbak says his organization will begin expanding into a second space in the BioBusiness Building’s Mayo Clinic Business Accelerator.

Sean Baker is a Rochester journalist and the founder of Med City Beat.