Digging begins for new tech-education campus

Culinary-arts students at the Mountainland Applied Technology Center will soon have more room to spread their dough.

The class of 100 is cramped in its current space, with students standing back-to-back at their cooking stations. A new campus expansion at Thanksgiving Point will provide enough space for the class to grow, accommodating a growing interest in culinary careers in Utah, Summit and Wasatch counties, which the center serves.

Ground was broken Tuesday for the school's fourth campus, which will occupy 22 acres of land purchased for $4.49 million in 2006.

In addition to the growing numbers of food-management hopefuls, the North Utah County campus aims to house a larger cosmetology department, a commercial-driver-training center, as well as facilities for a variety of health-care occupations.

President Clay Christensen said the building will help the applied-technology school graduate and place more students in the high-demand fields and will eventually replace the existing American Fork campus, where a property lease will expire in 2011.

"As your new governor, it really is all about jobs," said Gov. Gary Herbert, who spoke at the event, held at Electric Park. "Jobs and jobs and jobs. The key to growing the economy is the work force."

With enrollment up at all nine Utah College of Applied Technology campuses and other higher-education institutions across the state, he said people understand the importance of having a skilled work force.

"We've already had to turn people away," said Anthony Huntington, chairman of the department of culinary arts at the Mountainland center. He credits the popularity of the Food Network for the growing interest in food preparation and culinary arts, which he said extends way beyond working in a restaurant. The kitchen space in the new 75,000-square-foot building will be three times the size of the one in which Huntington's students currently learn and work.

"It will give us a lot of room to work and also a lot of room to grow," he said. "It'll be the nicest kitchen in the state, no doubt."

Cosmetology student Staci Hardy, of Pleasant Grove, said a new facility has become a necessity with the growing number of her peers doing hair and nails in an annex building in American Fork.

"We're just really crowded as it is," she said. "It'll be really exciting to have a new space."