There are company towns, and then there's Rochester—where waiters make meal recommendations based on what sort of blood work you're having drawn at Mayo Clinic the next morning. So when Mayo announced this month that it wants to spend billions of dollars to expand its facilities and remake this quietly prosperous city of 100,000 into a vibrant destination spot for Mayo's global clientele, that hit the top of Rochester's agenda, too. Mayo employs more than 34,000 people—one-third of the city's population. If you try to play the Mayo version of six degrees of separation with anyone in Rochester, it's going to be a pretty short game.