Rochester Rundown

Prior to the pandemic, many of the retail spaces in the downtown area had been filled with bustling small businesses — the kinds that are vital for a thriving destination area. But downtown Rochester, like many other city centers, has seen its restaurant and retail industries decimated by shutdowns and slow foot traffic, as previous trends, including the shift to online commerce and problems in the labor market, accelerated due to Covid-19. The result has been fewer small businesses seeking out space downtown, at a time when new development has made commercial space abundant.

This list goes through the heart of the Rochester music scene — no matter the genre, there is a local artist trying their hand at it. We reached out to local recording studios and music-makers to see who they were excited for, while doing research of our own — scouring DIY music sites like Soundcloud and Bandcamp to see who spent the past year releasing new music, priming themselves for an exciting summer of 2021.

Today on the Rochester Rundown, we check in with the students behind the Rochester Community Initiative. The group came together in the wake of the George Floyd protests last June, and has since grown in size and stature, adding roughly three dozen new members and creating programs for students and the general public alike. Their work revolves around advocating for youth representation and uplifting marginalized voices, and in recent months, their outreach has expanded into RPS classrooms beyond their own. In some cases, these students are becoming the teachers.

As the proportion of Minnesota residents to receive at least one vaccine dose approaches 25 percent, Gov. Tim Walz released sweeping rollbacks to Covid-19 restrictions Friday morning. Businesses like restaurants, gyms and salons can welcome more people into their shops, but perhaps the biggest changes came for large entertainment venues, which will be able to welcome thousands of people for sporting events and concerts in the near future. And on the local level, the first steps are being taken to bring live entertainment back.

We’ve heard from so many voices on the debate over reopening schools: frustrated parents, worried teachers, administrators and board members looking for a solution, but today on the show, we’re giving the spotlight to the students. Specifically, we’ll hear from four RPS high schoolers, who have been in distance learning since last March. We’ll get their thoughts on the district’s re-opening plan and the recent announcement from Gov. Tim Walz that may upend everything, plus how they’ve adapted to the new learning model and spending a year away from their teachers and friends.

So, how did things get like this, where a house gets snapped up by a feeding frenzy of buyers within hours of hitting the market? It’s partly thanks to the Covid-19 pandemic, but not entirely — more a multitude of factors that have been coalescing since the end of the Great Recession.

Today on the Rochester Rundown, we head to the RCTC Fieldhouse, where things have been quieter than normal thanks to the Covid-19 pandemic — until now. Olmsted County Public Health, with assistance from Mayo Clinic and Olmsted Medical Center, has taken over the space for the next two days, with the goal of giving out 2,300 vaccines to some of the last Phase 1A health care workers still waiting on a vaccination. We hear from the person in charge of this weekend's clinic, and find out what his team will take from this clinic to use for larger events in the future. Plus, a recap of a packed School Board meeting, which saw the resignation of Superintendent Michael Muñoz and the approval of two new learning models — signaling an eventual end to distance learning in Rochester.

Plus, we take you inside the two-man workshop building dozens of desks for elementary schoolers, preview another new track from a Rochester artist that released Friday, and check on what the latest Covid-19 case numbers look like.