KALAMAZOO, MI – Construction isn’t scheduled to begin on Kalamazoo Valley
Community College’s new Healthy Living Campus until spring of next year. But the first
classes could start rolling out as soon as the first quarter of 2014, said
Marilyn Schlack, president of KVCC.
The green-shaded area are the parcels donated by Bronson Methodist Hospital for a new Healthy Living campus being developed by Kalamazoo Valley Community College. The hospital is in orange.
“We see ourselves having a great opportunity to start doing
something around the vision of the new campus,” said Schlack. “In 2014, we will start rolling things out and
showing how they’re connected to what we’re trying to do.”
Among the early offerings: Classes on hoophouse growing,
which can extend the growing season in colder climates, and a food safety
technician program that KVCC is currently developing with the city of Battle
Creek, Schlack said.
While the campus is being built, these courses would be
offered at KVCC’s other campuses, as well as at Bronson Healthcare,
which is one of the partners in the new venture, along with Kalamazoo Community
Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services, Schlack said.
The food services technician program would be designed to
meet the increased regulatory demands of the Food Safety Modernization Act of
2011, which was passed after a series of outbreaks of food-borne illnesses in
the 2000s. It aims to shift the emphasis on food regulation from responding to
contamination to preventing it.
“The idea is to not only create entrepreneurs, but create
technicians that can work for the big companies – the Meijers and the Ciscos
and the big farms,” said Schlack. “You have small farmers that can’t afford to
have a food safety technician, but they could share that cost. We think there’s
going to be a job market that’s not being met at this time.”
The KVCC Board of Trustees approved the new venture in May and the new $42 million downtown campus was announced in July. Bronson Healthcare donated 13.3 acres of land to the project located within the Edison Neighborhood.
The partners have said they will not seek millages or bonds to finance the
project. The three will be putting up the money themselves, as well as seeking
national, state and private gifts and grants. Construction of the new campus is expected to begin in spring 2014.
In fact, KVCC was one of just five public universities or
community colleges whose capital outlay planning requests were approved this year. Gov. Rick Snyder approved its capital outlay
request of $6 million toward the Healthy Living Campus as part of Public Act
102. The request still would need separate legislative approval for a
construction authorization before KVCC received the money from the state.
The genesis for the Healthy Living Campus came several years
earlier, Schlack said, when the community college was trying to figure out how
to expand into an underserved area and “help people that didn’t have access to
nutritional food not only understand it but have access and then learn that it
could be prepared in a way that they would find appealing.
“The more we talked and the more we learned about what was
going on, we said, ‘Here’s an opportunity to do something a little differently,’ ” she said.
Schlack and other KVCC officials worked with Rick Foster, director
of the Institute for Greening Michigan at Michigan State University. They made
several exploratory visits to Detroit to see the work being done there with
urban farming and community gardens and how it might be translated to Kalamazoo.
Three facilities are
planned. KVCC will develop one for food production and
distribution, a second for nursing, allied health and culinary programs,
and the third will be a new psychiatric clinic for Kalamazoo Community Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services.
The link between food and physical and mental health has
only become more apparent in recent years, Schlack said.
“There’s two parts on it: It’s not just food. It’s the opportunity
to work,” Schlack said, citing programs in Amsterdam and Cleveland. “You give
that person value again. When you have value, you’re more interested in taking
care of yourself.”
Schlack also cited universities such as Tulane in Louisiana,
which mandated that its medical students take a nutritional course at a culinary
school, and the Harvard School of Public Health, which is collaborating with
the Culinary Institute of America.
“I’m thinking to myself: This is where it is,” Schlack said.
Schlack also said she hopes to be able to include area elementary
schools in the new venture.
“Studies have shown that children really get excited about
what they grow. That’s why we see this new campus as an educational
destination: How food is processed, how it’s grown,” Schlack said.
In a healthier version of Willy Wonka’s garden paradise, all
the landscaping at the new campus will be centered around food.
“All the landscaping, our intention is, is going to be
food-related – for birds and people,” Schlack said. “Instead of just having
bushes, you’ll have blueberry bushes. Instead of just having trees, you’ll have
apple trees.”
That way, children who might not ever have occasion to visit
a farm can see how food is grown.
“I find that exciting. I have people ask me: You’re an
educational institution: Is this really going to be educational? Absolutely. This
is all about education,” Schlack said.
The community college also is taking a collaborative
approach in the initial development stages — asking everyone from local chefs and Southwest
Michigan growers and food processors to church groups to provide input on the
project.
“We’re inviting in different groups to talk about what the
vision is and how we can help them,” Schlack said.
“One, we see the synergies of working together – not overlapping,
leveraging what we have, and being able to serve, especially some of the smaller,
emerging farm efforts to be successful and get their foods to market and have a
market,” she said.
Earlier in September, KVCC also met with the state
Department of Agriculture, which suggested that the area could use a
distribution link to help bridge the gap between small entrepreneurs and their potential
markets. It’s possible the community college may be able to provide that link
via the new campus, Schlack said.
“One of the things they’re recommending is that the county
or the city think about having an incubator, an innovation center for people
who work in the Can-Do Kitchen,” she said. “They need an interim space to get
their products to market … We’re talking about how can we work together to
make that happen and complement what’s happening on the new campus.”
“My real hope is that
we have people who will stay in our community, become young entrepreneurs. My
hope is that we will touch people who live in areas that can only go to a fast,
convenience center and a get a bottle of pop and chips instead of a fresh apple
— that we find ways of distribution. My hope is that we become a prototype for
other communities to emulate,” said Schlack. “And my hope is that we spur a kind of
economic development that really demonstrates that healthy living and foods and
working together can make a difference in a community.”
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