Rochester was occasionally a boomtown, but never in the Wild West sense.
But the record number of building permits issued in the city in 1968 confirmed that Rochester was one of the fastest-growing places, not only in Minnesota but in the entire Midwest.
In the calendar year 1968, building permits valued at $34.1 million were issued, surpassing the previous record of $27.9 million set three years earlier.
The overall result of the record year was based on what quickly became Rochester’s three-legged springboard to prosperity: Mayo Clinic, IBM and retail.
Leading the charge was a $10 million, eight-story addition to the Mayo Building. It was “not only the highest single permit in 1968, but also the highest in Rochester’s building history,” the Post-Bulletin said.
The second largest building permit amount of the year was $5.78 million for work on the Apache Mall, which was scheduled to open in 1969. The mall was designed to help make Rochester a magnet for shoppers from three states.
Meanwhile, IBM has secured $2.19 million in permits to expand its northwest Rochester facility.
Other major building permits reflected the community’s growth: $1.5 million for the municipal power plant, $369,000 for the new Herbert Hoover Elementary School, $304,000 for a new grocery store, and $228,000 for a new church.
At the same time, housing construction recovered from a multi-year slump. In 1968, building permits were issued for $10 million worth of new houses, apartments and duplexes. According to the Post-Bulletin, 325 building permits were issued for single-family homes, the highest number since 1962. The main development areas were northwest Rochester, Northern Heights and Valhalla.
Incidentally, the average price for a new home in 1968 was $21,934, excluding land and landscaping, the newspaper reported.
These construction figures, impressive as they may seem, are not all-encompassing. “Not included in the year-end report,” the Post-Bulletin said, “are construction projects under state jurisdiction, such as those at Rochester State Junior College and the State Hospital.”
Nevertheless, there was no doubt that Rochester was experiencing a boom.
“In 1968, Greater Rochester was the second-largest construction hotspot among metropolitan areas in the five-state Ninth Federal Reserve District,” the Post-Bulletin reported. Only the seven-county Minneapolis-St. Paul metropolitan area exceeded Greater Rochester’s total.
Technically, Rochester was not yet a designated metropolitan area, as the Census Bureau noted. But it was already behaving like one when it came to new construction, outperforming cities of similar or larger size. The designated metropolitan area of Duluth-Superior, for example, issued $23.9 million in permits in 1968.
Rochester’s construction figures from 1968 were of course exceeded many times over in the decades that followed. This boomtown never went under. By the end of 1968, there was little doubt that Rochester had embarked on an upward trend that most other cities could only watch and envy.
Thomas Weber is a former Post Bulletin reporter who enjoys writing about local history.
Thomas Weber is a former Post Bulletin reporter who enjoys writing about local history.