–by Marc Franke
Adapted from ForeRunner, the employee newsletter of AEGON USA)
It’s great to eat out from time to time at a really nice restaurant, the kind you leave thinking, “Now THAT was a class act!” My wife and I had just such an experience recently for breakfast at a new, upscale eatery right here in the Cedar Rapids area. The prices for such an upscale experience were surprisingly reasonable.
Where is it? How do they do it?
This particular fine dining establishment is part of an entirely new teaching facility at Kirkwood Community College. The complex provides a cutting edge approach to hands on, working-in-the-business training that includes a 71-room hotel, a restaurant and conference facilities with top drawer catering available for your business meeting or “off-site” strategic conference. The “Hotel at Kirkwood Center” (the official name of the facility) and The Class Act restaurant are managed and operated by culinary professionals to a high level of standards.
Unlike some facilities at other colleges and universities, these are open to the public, seven days a week. The new hotel is the largest teaching facility of its kind at a community college in North America. The building includes special classrooms like the amphitheater culinary demonstration facility with special ventilation to remove cooking fumes and integrated video/lighting for close up viewing of the food preparation techniques.
At least one AEGON employee, Diane Pflughaupt has a family member (son, Trever) in the Kirkwood Culinary Arts program this fall. Trever always enjoyed cooking and selected “chef” as a career choice in a job shadow program during his junior year in high school. He had the opportunity to spend a day at Kirkwood in the culinary facilities. This led to the pursuit of the two-year Culinary Arts degree at Kirkwood.
The Hotel complex was designed with “green architecture and systems” from the ground up, literally! Heating and cooling is provided by ground heat exchangers, with more than 200 wells and combined depth of 60,000 feet. Winter heat is extracted from 55 degree ground water while summer cooling is carried away by that same 55 degree ground water. Hot water is made hot and cold water is made cold for the entire facility using the same process (moving heat from one source to another). Payback for the energy savings is calculated at about two years.
This unique, world class teaching facility was funded by revenue bonds. As The Hotel and Class Act serve customers, revenue from those services will retire the bonds. Your patronage of this fine establishment helps to retire the debt necessary to create the beautiful facility for learning in Eastern Iowa.
What’s the bottom line? How’s the food?
In a word: great! In restaurants from New York to Los Angeles and Seattle to New Orleans, I don’t think I’ve had a finer breakfast than the one at The Class Act! Mine was buttermilk pancakes with apples, hazelnuts and mascarpone (fresh, very rich cow’s milk cheese often found in the Italian cake Tiramisù). My wife had the custom, three-egg omelet which she pronounced “best ever!”
The next time you want to give yourself a treat, it can be found no farther away than the Hotel at Kirkwood Center. The Hotel and conference facilities are at the corner of Kirkwood Boulevard and 76th Avenue SW, east of I-380 at the airport exit. The full-service menus for breakfast, lunch and dinner plus more information can be found at: http://www.classactdining.com/home .
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[This article provided courtesy of the AEGON USA employee newsletter ForeRunner and used by permission. The views expressed are those of the author and not necessarily those of AEGON USA or its management.]