Our firm has completed many planning and design projects for Concordia College. These projects included strategic planning, comparison studies, and the design of Knutson Dining Hall including a central production kitchen where 70 percent of the food and meal ingredients are produced and/or served and 30 percent are shipped to other campus dining venues. In 2006-2007, our team assisted the College with the development of a comprehensive master plan and design program for a new student center on its campus. Our project team completed extensive market research, including on-campus focus groups and personal interviews as well as a web-based survey, in order to better understand the eating habits and preferences of Concordia community.
With the market research complete, our team provided recommendations for the new center including proposed dining venues and programming suggestions. The recommendations were embraced by the College and Porter was hired to design the dining venues in the new $32 million Campus Center. The Anderson Commons in the new Campus Center opened to rave reviews in Fall 2007. The venue is contemporary and inviting with lots of large windows that allow natural light to stream into the servery and dining room. The servery features a wide variety of stations including a grill, pizza/pasta station with a wood-burning oven, a deli station, a large soup and salad bar and an Explore station that was designed to offer a variety of ethnic cuisines.
“Concordia College contracted with PKC for the design of our new campus center. Because this facility has multiple uses, this was an extensive project involving many departments across campus,” says Debra Ross, director of dining services. “The expertise and knowledge demonstrated by PKC was invaluable to us. They listened to our needs and coupled those thoughts with their experience resulting in a dining center that has exceeded our expectations from a financial and customer service perspective. There was a time that our Enrollment department didn’t even take prospective students and parents into the dining area. Now we are the gem of the College and used as a recruitment tool. What a difference!”
