COD center to include restaurants, boutique hotel
It's a safe bet that most on-campus lodging at American colleges don't include room service, but College of DuPage is looking to change that.
The college's proposed $25 million Culinary & Hospitality Center was unveiled Thursday at the board of trustees meeting. The proposal includes two working restaurants and a six-room boutique hotel. It also includes the usual academic trappings for such programs, but double the size of what's currently available at the campus.
"I've been doing construction projects for a lot of years and been responsible for millions of dollars and who knows how many square feet of buildings, and this is as well-done as anything I've ever seen," said COD President Robert Breuder.
Revenue projections for the hotel and restaurants - one fine dining and the other casual - haven't been determined yet, but college officials hope operational revenues along with the increased enrollment in the programs the building is being created for will reduce the cost to students and taxpayers.
"I'm very excited about this and I can see someone coming to the campus for a concert at the (McAninch Arts Center) and going here for dinner," said board Chairman Kathy Wessel. "To see the possibilities that are there is really incredible."
The money for the new building was originally going to be spent renovating the existing areas on campus, but space limitations along with increased consolidation costs made building a new structure more feasible, officials said.
"Moving a kitchen is very expensive," said Senior Project Manager Aleisha Jaeger. "We have a couple-million-dollar equipment budget for the new center, but we're reusing everything we can that we already have."
Unlike the kitchen and bakery, the hotel component does not already exist. The plans call for The Inn at Water's Edge to essentially take up the new facility's entire third floor. Four single-bed rooms and two double-bed rooms make up the lodging accommodations.
The restaurants and hotel will be professionally staffed, but students will have opportunities to work in all the environments as part of their class programs.
About 500 students are enrolled in the programs that will be housed at the new building. Officials expect those numbers to double once the new building goes live.
Board member Nancy Svoboda was concerned that Morton Arboretum's restaurant offers a similar dining experience as the college's proposed fine-dining eatery, which will be called Waterleaf. But Breuder said he expects the campus restaurant and the arboretum's facility to complement one another.
The college will break ground next month and the new building is expected to be open by August 2011, Jaeger said. It will be located at the northeast corner of the college's Glen Ellyn campus.
Grub: Building to open August 2011