Plan to Move Culinary Institute Advances

Paving the way for an award-winning cooking school to move to more spacious quarters, a Los Angeles City Council committee Wednesday recommended approval of a combination loan and grant to renovate a North Hollywood medical office building.

The money, a $552,500 loan and a $97,500 grant made possible by the city’s Commercial/Industrial Earthquake Recovery Loan Program, would allow owners Robert and Diane Starr to renovate their 22,450-square-foot property at 11311 Camarillo St. to house the Los Angeles Culinary Institute.

On Wednesday, the City Council’s Housing and Community Redevelopment Committee voted 2 to 0 to recommend to the full council that the loan and grant be approved, said John McCoy, director of housing for the Community Redevelopment Agency, which also recommended the loan.

The council is expected to vote on the proposal next week.

The building’s total renovation cost will be about $800,000. The Starrs will receive the remaining $150,000 from the Small Business Administration’s disaster-relief program.

Under the terms of a 10-year lease, the culinary institute will occupy all 8,000 square feet of the building’s eastern wing and 4,000 square feet of the western wing’s upper floor, according to the CRA’s recommendation.

Since January, the school run by Chef Raimund Hofmeister has operated from tight quarters at an upscale Encino mini-mall. Hofmeister said he hopes to move the institute’s administrative offices by the end of September and anticipates offering classes at the new site early next year.

“It’s going to be state-of-the-art, no question about it,” Hofmeister said, noting that the new headquarters will include nine kitchens and room for as many as 550 students. He added that the school will maintain its public restaurant, the Classroom, in Encino.

Previously, the institute was situated in the Los Angeles Equestrian Center in Burbank but was evicted in November for failure to pay rent for about a year, a situation Hofmeister had earlier characterized as a business dispute over lease terms and repairs.