(Radio Iowa) – Iowa State University plans to build a new facility to produce the food for residence halls and other operations. I-S-U vice president of finance, Sean Reeder, presented the plans for a new dining support center at the recent Board of Regents meeting. “This dining support center would be designed to be the central food production facility for I-S-U dining. It’ll be approximately 27-thousand square feet,” he says. The new facility will upgrade and modernize food preparation for the Ames campus.

“It services over 20 dining service operations that include central bakery catering operations or retail outlets and the residential,” Reeder says. He says the food facility used now is in a building that’s nearly 60 years old. “Currently the dining is using the Knapp-Storms building for their central bakery and culinary operations. This building was built in 1966 and really just no longer meets our operational needs,” he says. The aging infrastructure is at end of life and it lacks capacity to support the modern culinary demands, technologies and workflows.”

Reeder says this is the first phase of a two-phase plan to upgrade the food preparation and delivery on campus. “We will remove all the production operations out of the Knapp-Storms building and into the this new facility, and then we’ll demolish the Knapp-Storms building at the completion of phase one,” he says. “The estimated project budget is 20 to 23 million and this will be funded through I-S-U Dining and Department of Residence through building renewal funds.”

The second phase pending the availability of funding would move the shipping and receiving operations to a facility located near the new building. It would also add 15-square feet to that shipping and receiving facility. The Regents approved moving ahead with a design for the new food facility and developing a timeline for its construction.