A new building for the John Folse Culinary Institute is still a number one priority for Nicholls, University President Stephen Hulbert said; however, students may not see a new building for years. Alton Doody, dean of John Folse Culinary Institute, had proposed to move the culinary institute to Bayou Country Club instead of building a new culinary building. In addition, the culinary institute would have opened a restaurant where students would work and run the restaurant for a grade. Doody was not available for comment.

“I have been building relationships with the local restaurant community to the point where they are hiring our students, they support us, they come here and give our students knowledge,” culinary instructor Anne Parr said, “We have a very good relationship with the surrounding region. The restaurant community was not happy to find out that the program they were supporting would turn around and compete with them for restaurant business.”

Hulbert rejected the proposal for the Bayou Country Club plans.

“I could not have gone into a competitive notion with a private sector; it is very hard for a public entity to contract with a private entity,” Hulbert said, “Donations were given and monies are available, to use those monies for a temporary fix is not an appropriate use. Donors gave money for a new building, it would not be appropriate for us to use it for any other purpose. Once we have a new building, we will add a restaurant.”

After acquiring about $5 million worth of land, Nicholls has yet to finalize plans for the construction of a new culinary institute building for the growing department.

“In order to grow, we need different types of kitchens and developments,” Parr said. “We need a research and development kitchen, we just don’t have the room for it here. Some of our other classes need specialized equipment. We need a new facility to provide extra room and serve as a center for culinary development. We want to be a research center for Cajun and Creole foods.”

“The price of any kind of facility has greatly increased,” Hulbert said. “We now have a budget request for a new capital project at about $20 million. With current financial conditions, it will be a long time before that is funded.”

“A lot of the new administration is about quantity and not quality, they want more people coming in instead of helping the people who are already here,” Sarah Menard, culinary arts senior from Jennings, said. “They have made promises to us about a new building and nothing has happened.”

“As of now, we are trying to develop support from state government,” Hulbert said. “We have not had state government backing since hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Louisiana has far more capital proposals across the state than we have resources to fund. The fact is the state has not had a strong history of funding projects for this institution.”

In 2003, Nicholls considered using Rienzi Plantation to house the new culinary institute.

“We accepted the donation under not damaging the historic presence of the property,” Hulbert said. “We would have had to change the property-cut trees and make room for parking lots-and it still wouldn’t have been large enough for the culinary building and support structures, we would have had to input changes that I was not willing to do.”

“Based on the number of growth and needs of the program, it would be best for students and the campus for the new building to be located on the acquired land instead of the plantation,” Hulbert said. “If the program had been at Rienzi, students would have to leave campus to drive to class. This way, students are still on the main campus and can access the instructional facility and not have to drive from location to location.”

The culinary institute was put in a temporary location-Gouaux Hall-in the early 90s, “students and faculty are cramped, classrooms have been redesigned and remodeled to better serve students, but we need more space if we are going to be able to support the incoming students,” Hulbert said.

“We are doing everything we can to represent the value of the culinary institute and the program to the state of Louisiana. Our goal is to give the best academic experience we have, in the long run, it will require a new culinary institute building,” Hulbert said.