Florence-Darlington Tech to start culinary arts, hospitality program

A partnership between Florence-Darlington Technical College and the Darla Moore Foundation will bring a new culinary arts and hospitality program to downtown Lake City.

Dr. Ben Dillard, president of Florence-Darlington Tech, is calling it “transformational” not just for the school, but for the city, county and Pee Dee region.

Last May, the Darla Moore Foundation announced a $5 million gift as a catalyst to launch the new programs for the school, and Dillard said Thursday the school is far along in the planning stages of a new 35,000-square-foot building to be located adjacent to The Inn At The Crossroads.

And through the generosity of the foundation, the 58-room hotel and its immediate environs have been taken over by the technical college and will be a classroom of sorts for students.

The new building will be situated adjacent to the hotel, and the school has also reached a deal with Pee Dee Regional Transportation Authority to shuttle students from Florence to Lake City and back. Ground for the new building will be broken in the summer.

Dillard estimates that 400 students will soon have the chance to get hands-on experience in the restaurant and hotel; the school is planning on the culinary and hospitality programs kicking off in the fall of 2018.

“It’s just amazing,” Dillard said. “It’s just a transformational change and truly a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity with the Darla Moore Foundation. We at Florence-Darlington Tech feel her generosity will have a tremendous impact on Lake City for years to come.”

Next to the hotel is a banquet hall complete with its own kitchen and Dillard said that will be central to a new catering service the school will launch in conjunction with the new programs.

“We’ve purchased a catering truck and there’s a loading dock in the banquet hall to facilitate loading and unloading,” said Mark Roth, vice president of the college's Southeastern Institute of Manufacturing and Technology. “We host so many events each year and this will provide catering to many of those events.”

The hotel, the catering business and banquet hall will also provide a steady stream of revenue for the college, said Jill Lewis, vice president for institutional development and advancement.

Ed Bethea, the school’s vice president of marketing and public relations, said Florence-Darlington Tech is building a stronger foothold in southern Florence County. Working with high schools in that area is a natural fit, Dillard said, and they’re happy to facilitate distance learning and dual credit programs so high school students can get a leg up.

“We can beam courses out to schools,” Bethea said, “and they take online tests and so forth to earn college credit. We don’t have to physically be there but this greatly increases access to education for many students in places like Scranton, Johnsonville and Hannah-Pamplico.”

Dillard said it’s hard to express how much gratitude the college has for the Darla Moore Foundation.

“I don’t think you’ll find another model like this – a hotel, catering, a first-class restaurant and college campus pulled together by a single benefactor,” he said. “We’ve got a lot of exciting things going on.”

This story was originally published January 7, 2017 at 8:12 PM with the headline "Florence-Darlington Tech to start culinary arts, hospitality program."