Leo Adam Biga's My Inside Stories

This article appeared a couple years ago on the occasion of the opening of the new Institute for Culinary Arts building at Metropolitan Community College‘s Fort Omaha campus.  The institute has long enjoyed a national reputation and now it has a facility commensurate with its good name.  It’s an impressive structure for what is probably the college’s signature program, and the new quarters, complete with every cooking tool imaginable, and associated landscaping form a grand new front door or entrance for this community college that’s come into its own in the last two decades.

All Trussed Up with Somewhere to Go, Metropolitan Community College‘s Institute for Culinary Arts Takes Another Leap Forward with its New Building on the Fort Omaha Campus 

©by Leo Adam Biga

Originally published in The Reader (www.thereader.com)

The opening of Metropolitan Community College’s new $16 million Institute for Culinary Arts building last November gave the culinary program a spacious, state-of-the-art home and the school a new gateway to the Fort Omaha campus.

On March 22 the glass and brick structure designed by HDR Architecture of Omaha has its official dedication.

The public event starts at 4:30 with tours and a reception. The ceremonial opening is at 5:30.

The Institute is the attractive anchor for the college’s new main entrance at 32nd and Sorenson Parkway. Passersby can even glimpse food production and preparation training through the west bank of windows.

Executive director Jim Trebbien has led ICA during a period of substantial growth the past 22 years. He’s seen ICA earn national accreditations and increase enrollment from a few dozen students to more than 600. He’s seen it become Metro’s marquee academic program and  “come of age” along with the college.

Jim Trebbien

He said all four Metro presidents he’s reported to have “backed us and let us do what we do well because we know what we’re doing.”

The new digs, with seven kitchens compared to one in the old makeshift quarters and boasting all new equipment, surpasses even Trebbien’s wildest hopes.

“I never in my mind envisioned something like this,” he said. “Surreal is the word for it. To me, it’s another step. It fulfills the dreams of a lot of people in this city of having a place where the restaurant community comes together. Omaha needs this, too. Education is an important part of developing our work force here.”

Indeed, he said the facilities stack up with the best anywhere. A program long known for excellence, he said, finally has a home commensurate with its standing.

“We’re good at what we do,” he said. “We made it happen before. We’ve still got pretty much the same faculty, which are really the backbone of making a good school . The same high standards went on in the old kitchen, and without a promise of a new kitchen. But the old site was getting to the end. You can only push something so far, and where that breaking point is you never know for sure, but we could have been really close to it, And now here we are all of a sudden with a new face and more space.”

ICA can now accommodate 1,000 students. No more must students squeeze into tight confines or instructors stagger  classes and projects at odd hours seven days a week to handle demand. No more problems finding enough or the right equipment, much less room to store it in.

The main production kitchen would be the envy of any upscale eatery.

“It’s a dream kitchen,” said service chef coordinator and ICA grad Brian Young. “Everything anybody would ever need is here at our fingertips. It just makes the educational opportunities that much better. It gives students a chance to be on an actual line. I’ve watched the program grow and develop into a great, great curriculum. I’m actually jealous of the students going through now and the amazing facility they have to work in.”

Chef-instructor Oystein Solberg added, “It’s any chef’s wet dream.”

There’s more, though. The building and its richly outfitted features befit the name Institute and the seriousness it connotes. “That’s exactly what it is, too, it’s really serious,” said Trebbien. He said the new facilities make a statement that  “we’ve got a real culinary institute right here.” He said everyone who sees it, from prospective students to veteran Omaha restauranteurs, “are mesmerized.”

“Any student that now leaves Omaha to go to culinary school has to want to either spend a lot of money or get away out of town,” he said. “The Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park does a fantastic job and you’re going to get everything you pay for, but here you’re going to get 95 percent of what you get out there and we’re going to do it for probably one-seventh of the money.”

He said more than low out-of-state tuition accounts for ICA having students from 27 states and nine countries.

“When people come here they see what we do, how we do it and our dedication, they see that we place our people well, they see the Omaha community and restaurant industry embrace us well.”

ICA doesn’t need to take a backseat to anyone. “I can given students all the opportunities now,” Trebbien said. It’s all made an impression on students and faculty. “It certainly gives you a feeling of grandeur,” said student Dawn Cisney. “It’s beautiful here. It’s unbelievable seeing how far we’ve come from the old building to now.” Chef-instructor Brian O’Malley calls it “a transformation. You can really finally start to see what’s possible. One of the biggest changes is a general increase of the level of respect that everyone is walking around with.” It’s pride, said Cisney.

The building also holds possibilities for more community engagement via a  conference center that can host banquets and a culinary theater/demonstration kitchen with production capability to broadcast training classes and cooking shows.

This spring ICA’s first produce garden will be planted outside the building, one of many Trebbien envisions. He wants ICA and the associated horticultural program to actively partner with the North Omaha community gardens movement. By late summer or early fall, he said, a culinary store will open in the renovated old mule barn adjacent to the Institute. The public will be able to purchase take-home entrees and other products prepared by students. Food-related items will be sold.

The Sage Student Bistro at the Institute offers a fine-dining experience to the public with meals prepared by students using local, artisan ingredients.

All of it is part of a sustainable food chain ICA wishes to model. The Institute already employs an integrated system that cycles food from its pantries and coolers for use throughout the building.

Said Trebbien, “We want to be the place that teaches people to plant, grow, harvest, sell, market and cook good, healthy food. That’s what we want to add back to the community, and this building is the start of that.”