The College of DuPage (COD) is the Midwest’s largest two-year community college campus, located in Glen Ellyn, Illinois. COD serves students in DuPage county as well as parts of Cook County and Will County. COD’s $25 million, 60,000-square-foot Culinary and Hospitality Center (CHC), located on the Northeast side of campus near the McAnich Arts Center, houses the College's Hospitality Administration and Culinary Arts programs, as well as Multimedia Services. COD is one of only a few colleges and universities nationwide to house a professionally operated fine dining restaurant and a six-bedroom boutique hotel within its educational center.
With expanded kitchens, bake-shops and a fine dining room, the CHC is also a media marvel, with training rooms, digital media delivered throughout the facility, training labs, and a state-of-the-art multimedia center and amphitheater. Diversified was awarded the technical design of the video and audio infrastructure through Loebl, Schlossman and Hackle, architects and engineers.
The Center is a mixed-use facility, implementing both broadcast and audio visual technologies under a single roof. Diversified’s challenge in the broadcast and av system integration was to decommission the production and editing facilities and relocate them to the new CHC while minimizing the facility’s downtime. In parallel, Diversified’s audio/video engineers completed the new culinary, hotel management, dining rooms and educational facilities.
Diversified delivered on the promise of integrating media into every aspect of both the hospitality and teaching facilities. The new center doubled the enrollment space available for these programs, allowing for a 30 percent growth in enrollment and both fall/spring start dates. Additionally, The CHC has been constructed for U.S. Green Building Council's LEED certification, making it the first culinary learning facility in the nation to achieve this prestigious designation.
