Cooking up a deal: Goodman wants school to stay downtown

Diana Sahagun

Tuesday, April 10, 2001 | 11:18 a.m.

The academy where students learn to provide service in Las Vegas hotels needs an upgrade, and Mayor Oscar Goodman knows just where the upgraded facility should stay.

Downtown Las Vegas, in need of an upgrade itself, is the perfect match for the Culinary Union Training Center -- recently renamed the Culinary & Hospitality Academy -- and its plans for a modern facility, Goodman says.

Just as the mayor wants to revitalize downtown, union officials want to revitalize their approach to training service workers in an ever-changing industry.

The academy, now run out of the Days Inn Hotel on 7th and Fremont streets, has fallen victim to age, and students are training with outdated tools and technology, said Steven Horsford, adviser to the board of trustees for the academy.

"Our kitchen ... this is not what they will see when they go into the Mirage or MGM hotels," Horsford said. "The same goes with housekeeping. The rooms we train in ... they're not like the suites you'll find (in hotel-casinos) with the marble or brass."

The need for a new training center melds with the need for downtown Las Vegas to be rejuvenated by new businesses and state-of-the-art buildings.

A $50,000 grant the city recently provided from federal funds allowed the Culinary Union to produce a feasibility study to determine the costs and needs of a new facility. The projection was that a state-of-the-art training center would cost as much as $15 million.

Goodman said a modern training center is necessary for the hotel industry, and it also will encourage new businesses to relocate in the area.

"It's important to the community," Goodman said. "We've changed. In the old days the center was in place to train waiters and cooks, now people are trying to be chefs and sommeliers."

If a new center can be built, it would be another piece in the downtown redevelopment puzzle that Goodman and the Redevelopment Agency and Neighborhood Services are trying to assemble. A new Metro Police substation and a UNLV law center are other projects on the scale of the training center that Goodman has said he would like to see downtown.

The academy's free programs are partially funded by unionized hotel-casinos, which each contribute 3 cents an hour for every employee. The properties generate $2 million for the academy annually.

Classes train students for work in such positions as kitchen worker, food server, guest-room attendant and cashier. The academy operates a full-service restaurant open to the public so students can get hands-on experience.

The academy's 2,500 graduates a year are given priority at participating hotel-casinos, Horsford said. Culinary leaders are hoping class sizes can double at the new center.

The feasibility study, conducted by P&D Consultants Inc., recommended a 49,875-square-foot center complete with demonstration kitchen, classrooms, pantry area and meeting space.

For the housekeeping component the consultants recommended a range of types and sizes of the typical Las Vegas hotel rooms, varying from mid-level to high-end rooms.

More classroom space and administrative offices also are needed, according to the study.

The consultants also added that a child-care facility is needed on-site to serve students and other employees in the downtown area.

The new facility would also offer more advanced courses for chefs, wine servers, and other advanced positions.

"Las Vegas doesn't just have coffee shops, steak houses, or buffets anymore," said George Seess, director of training for the academy. "We're trying to gear our training to more specialities -- sommeliers, line cooks and food servers."

The consultants selected seven potential sites in the downtown area, ranging from $1 million to $5 million to acquire.

Culinary leaders have introduced Assembly Bill 594, which asks the state for $8 million for design and construction of the facility.

Goodman last month met with the Ford Foundation in San Francisco to ask for a grant to cover the costs of a new academy. He also spoke at a meeting attended by representatives of 20 foundations that contribute toward job placement for minorities and low-income people.

"This will be a wonderful place to train and people would come from all over," Goodman said. "Their center is old and seedy compared to what they really need to make it a first-class facility."