Glen Ellyn's Next Weekend Getaway Destination? It Could Be COD

This fall, a weekend getaway in Glen Ellyn might mean a stay at the College of DuPage. That's right, COD. As a bonus, those overnight stays would help students learn as they serve guests in a kind of living laboratory—and quite a comfortable one, at that. 

That's because despite this winter's snows, the college is on schedule to have its $23 million Culinary and Hospitality Center open for fall semester classes. 

The sleek building of stone and glass is set for an August opening and will house 60,000 square feet of culinary kitchens, baking areas and restaurants. The third floor will house six boutique hotel rooms overlooking a landscaped pond that the college plans to call The Inn at Water's Edge. 

"Oh, it's very unique," said Catherine Leveille, who supervises the labs for COD's culinary, pastry, hospitality and foodservice administration. "We are remarkably lucky."

It's rare, she says, for a college, especially a community college, to have the opportunity for such hands-on learning. The culinary center, for instance, will have  a 150-seat fine dining restaurant called Waterleaf, which will be run by a professional staff for half the week and by students during the other half. Students will also help out in running a casual dining area in the center, to be called Wheat. Hospitality students will be integral to managing the boutique hotel, which will carry color accents evocative of herbs and spices like blue sage and cinnamon. 

To enter the center, students and guests will walk through a Winter Garden lobby and atrium, where they will also see a culinary market nearby. As for hands-on training, the center will have a skills kitchen in addition to fine dining and casual dining kitchens. Nearby will be a culinary amphitheater and a multimedia television studio. On the second floor, within the bakeshop, will a room be dedicated solely to chocolate. 

Currently, students in their second semester help run the Escoffier Dining Room, which is open to the public, a few days a week. The eating area, like the rest of the hospitality administration's labs and programs, is housed inside of the COD's Student Resource Center. 

The forthcoming Culinary and Hospitality Center "legitimizes us," said Daniel Taylor, a 20-year-old culinary student at COD, while he was plating vanilla mascarpone and a chocolate torte. "People go, 'Oh, COD.' But they don't understand what goes on in here," he said last Thursday, gesturing to the dining room around him as students bustled about, serving grilled salmon and sauteed chicken to guests for lunch. 

With regard to the public, the idea is for people in the community to invest an evening or weekend at COD, said Brian Kleemann, part of the external relations staff at COD. People would, for example, venture to COD for a play or music at the McAninch Art Center, linger over dinner at the Waterleaf and spend the night at the Inn at Water's Edge. 

Chris Thielman, the coordinator of COD's Hospitality Administration programs, as well as an instructor, noted that the building will be LEED certified (the first of its kind in the country), meaning that it is being built green and will be rated on a series of  environmental standards. 

Said Thielman, smiling at the scope of the whole project :"It's entirely unusual."