State-of-the-art $25M culinary school on menu for HCCC 'Tops in technology' will spur enrollments

By Ken Thorbourne

The cooks are getting a bigger kitchen - and then some.

Hudson County Community College will be getting a new, $25 million Culinary Arts Institute facility on Newkirk Street in Jersey City, right next to the program's existing three-story building.

The new 72,000-square-foot, five-story Georgian Revival facility will allow the college to boost enrollment in its well-regarded culinary arts program from 300 to 500 students.

Although students and staff express fond feelings for their current culinary home, all say they look forward to the end of shoulder-to-shoulder cooking in the program's current 700-square-foot main kitchen.

The new building - the first phase is due to be completed next February - will feature eight "laboratory" kitchens averaging 1,300 square feet, six classrooms wired for computers and other data and media systems, a 270-seat banquet hall, a hospitality suite, a room dedicated to cold food preparations, a student lounge area and an administration suite.

Next February, when half of the new facility is complete, the old building will be knocked down, the program transferred, and new construction incorporating the current space into the new building will continue for another year.

Dennis Baumeyer, executive director of the institute for the past 51/2 years, said the new facility will be "state-of-the-art" in every aspect, singling out temperature controls and the computer-ready classrooms.

A finishing area for advanced pastry-making will prove a great asset for working with chocolate and sugars, he said.

"The message it sends to us is that the community and college is supportive of what we have to offer," said Baumeyer. "The hospitality industry is one of the fastest-growing in the United States. This shows an investment for the future."

The architect for the project - Rivardo, Schinitzer, and Capazzi of Cliffside Park - brought in Cody Hicks, who for eight years was the in-house designer at the Culinary Institute of America in New Hyde Park, N.Y., one of the most prominent cooking schools in the nation.

"This is going to be the best culinary facility in the country," Hicks said. "It's at the top technologically."

He said he's especially happy with the fact that the new building will be constructed from scratch.

"At the CIA, we were always renovating. No one starts with a blank slate," but at HCCC they did, he said. "For me, it was a once in lifetime opportunity."

Jersey City old-timers will recall the program's present site as the former Greenspan's Restaurant. Built in the 1950s, the building was leased by the college in the 1980s and HCCC bought it in 2000.

College president Glen Gabert and Charles T. Epps Jr., Jersey City schools superintendent and the college's board chairman, joined Jersey City Mayor Glenn D. Cunningham and Hudson County Executive Thomas DeGise at a groundbreaking earlier this month.

Christina Prins, a 20-year-old Hoboken resident in her second semester as a freshman, said she looked forward to having dressing rooms in the new building.

As for the program itself, the former history major at Rider University said: "I love it here. It is the best experience in the world."

Ken Thorbourne covers education and can be reached at kthorbou@jjournal.com

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