Johnson County Community College Breaks Expectations

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JCCC recently completed a $13-million, free-standing, culinary academy. This is a tremendous investment that greatly benefits the culinary talent in this town. The new academy houses seven kitchens: five culinary labs, an innovation kitchen and a demonstration kitchen in a theater that seats 75. The facility serves up to 900 students enrolled in the college’s nationally recognized hospitality management program. And here’s food for thought: A community sponsorship program, "Friends with Taste," offers memberships to the public, ranging from $100 to $500, that provides first dibs on cooking classes, special dinners, tour and events at the center.

Membership or not, you can try out food prepared by the academy students at Café Tempo on the campus. This foodie haven is housed inside The Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art. You can also drop by on Friday afternoons at 3 p.m. to buy baked goods from the pastry case right inside the front door of the HCA.

The chef apprenticeship program at JCCC is sponsored by the American Culinary Federation, the Greater Kansas City Chef’s Association and the U.S. Department of Labor. The three-year program consists of 6,000 hours of training under an American Culinary Federation chef member as well as formal coursework. It is the first program in the United States to receive American Culinary Federation Educational Institute accreditation. More than 100 local Kansas City restaurants use talent from JCCC in their kitchens.

Foundation Supports JCCC’s New Hospitality & Culinary Academy

The Hospitality and Culinary Academy is officially open for classes, and the public dedication was last October 2013.

The one-story building, located directly south of the Regnier Center parking garage and easily visible from both College Boulevard and Quivira Road, will serve the 700-plus students in JCCC hospitality management programs and allow the college to offer more continuing education classes for the general public.

The building cost $13 million, about $3.2 million of which was raised by the JCCC Foundation. The project was launched with a $750,000 challenge grant from former Kansas State Sen. David Wysong and his wife, Kathy. Other leadership gifts include support from the following:

• Ball Family Charitable Foundation
• Barton P. Cohen Community Series
• J.D. and Anne Hodgdon Family Foundation
• The Hotel and Lodging Association of Greater Kansas City
• ACF Kansas City’s Chef Association
• Kirk Foundation
• Missouri Restaurant Association - Greater Kansas City Chapter
• Maron Lorimer Moore
• I.A. O’Shaughnessy Foundation
• Victor and Helen Regnier Charitable Foundation
• The Roasterie, Inc.
• George and Patricia Semb
• Standard Beverage Corporation
• The Sunderland Foundation

The 36,000-square-foot building houses seven kitchens: five culinary labs, an innovation kitchen and a demonstration kitchen in a culinary theater. A soaring 18-foot high lobby will make the building feel much larger than a one-story building, said Lindy Robinson, dean, business.

Innovation kitchen: This glass-walled space, located to the left of the lobby, gives visitors a chance to see the college’s award-winning culinary team in action as they practice for competitions. Currently, the team practices in kitchens in the Office and Classroom Building, tucked away from public view. Visiting chefs also will be featured in the innovation kitchen, Robinson said.

The Wysong Family Culinary Theatre: The 75-seat culinary theater, located to the right of the entry, is equipped with a modified kitchen and back room preparation area for cooking demonstrations. A video production room and equipment allows demonstrations to be taped and aired on the college’s cable channel. The tiered theater will become home for entry-level classes and will allow those classes to grow to 40 students, Robinson said.

Culinary labs: Two labs will be used for professional cooking classes, one for pastry classes, another is the Ball Family Garde Manger Culinary Lab, or cold foods kitchen, and the last of the five labs is a restaurant kitchen.

The restaurant kitchen will adjoin the Regnier Family Dining Room on the east end of the building that will be used for Thursday hospitality luncheons and other events.

The Regnier Family Dining Room also will be available for other events. In fact, with the lobby area and an outdoor patio on the east side of the building, the academy could be host to a number of events, Robinson said.

The Ball Family Garde Manger Culinary Lab is designed so that it can be used for meat fabrication, she said, with tracks in the ceiling that can be used to hang a side of beef. While JCCC student chefs may not have to do their own butchering, they need to know where cuts of meat are from and how that affects the cooking method used.

Meat fabrication possibilities don’t end with JCCC student chefs, Robinson said. The lab would allow the college to offer continuing education classes for butchers entering the field. Other continuing education classes could feed the hunger to learn about cooking fueled by the growth of the Food Channel.

"People want to take our entry level cooking classes, but we can't do that now," she said.

With the new building, those classes could become a possibility, along with summer cooking classes for kids, which have been requested by parents for years.

Hospitality management faculty and staff will be housed in the building as well, with an office suite that accommodates 15 or more people. The building also contains classrooms, workspace for adjunct instructors, a conference room and the Maron J. Moore Hospitality Library.

DLR Group in Overland Park designed the building; J.E. Dunn was the general contractor.

New Culinary Building at JCCC Earns LEED Silver Rating

OVERLAND PARK, Kan. – The new Hospitality and Culinary Academy at Johnson County Community College has earned a LEED Silver certification.

LEED, which stands for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, is a nationally recognized green building certification program that rates buildings based on their energy-saving and environmentally friendly construction. It is supervised by the U.S. Green Building Council. Buildings are rated by independent parties and accrue points in seven categories: sustainable site, water efficiency, energy and atmosphere, materials and resources, indoor environmental quality, innovation and regional priorities.

The rating is based on the number of points scored out of a maximum total of 110 for the system used in rating the Hospitality and Culinary Academy; the academy received 51 points.

"The LEED rating is more than just a plaque on a wall for us," said Rex Hays, associate vice president for campus services and facilities planning. "It reflects the value we place on being good stewards of the earth and good stewards of taxpayer money."

The Hospitality and Culinary Academy is the third JCCC building to earn a LEED rating. Galileo’s Pavilion, a classroom building that opened in 2012, earned a platinum ranking and the college’s Olathe Health Education Center that opened in 2011 earned a gold ranking.