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In addition to the new UF grad school coming to downtown, a prestigious culinary school may also be looking to expand to Jacksonville.<\/p>\n
The mayor\u2019s office has confirmed with Action News Jax the Culinary Institute of America has had \u201cpreliminary discussions\u201d with city leaders about coming to the Bold News City of the South.<\/p>\n
When Chef Derek Shroyer first heard rumors that his alma mater might be considering expanding to Jacksonville, his first reaction was confusion.<\/p>\n
>>> STREAM ACTION NEWS JAX LIVE <<<<\/a><\/p>\n \u201cI just kind of thought there could be other cities in Florida that would make more sense monetarily,\u201d Shroyer said.<\/p>\n But after mulling it over, his tune quickly changed.<\/p>\n \u201cAfter like, being puzzled, I was very excited about it,\u201d Shroyer said.<\/p>\n Shroyer graduated from the Culinary Institute of America in 1997.<\/p>\n He now works as a chef at BB\u2019s Restaurant and Bar in San Marco, where he uses what he learned at CIA every day.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat is really good about that school is it\u2019s kind of like a business school also,\u201d Shroyer said.<\/p>\n The Institute has its main campus in Hyde Park, New York, but has expanded to include campuses in California, Texas, and even Singapore.<\/p>\n Shroyer said he thinks if CIA were to open a campus in Jacksonville, it could elevate the city\u2019s dining scene and boost the local talent pool.<\/p>\n [DOWNLOAD: Free Action News Jax app for alerts as news breaks<\/a>]<\/p>\n \u201cIt would be so nice just to have just a ton of kids to be able to employ that are like, one, passionate about food, cause you can\u2019t really buy that. That has to be driven into somebody. And also the importance of this being a career,\u201d Shroyer said.<\/p>\n When the institute opened its San Antonio campus in 2007, the move was funded with the help of a massive donation from a local philanthropist<\/a>.<\/p>\n Shroyer predicts something similar would likely be needed to make a Jacksonville campus a reality, but argued it would be money well spent.<\/p>\n \u201cEverybody goes out and eats. Everybody goes out and loves the food. Everybody loves to go out and talk about all the stuff they love to eat and love to go. And without an investment like this, you know, it\u2019s just gonna continue to struggle,\u201d Shroyer said.<\/p>\n Action News Jax reached out to the Culinary Institute of America for comment and was told conversations related to an expansion into Jacksonville are preliminary and \u201cit would be premature to comment on them\u201d.<\/p>\n [SIGN UP: Action News Jax Daily Headlines Newsletter<\/a>] <\/p>\n Click here<\/a> to download the free Action News Jax news and weather apps, click here<\/a> to download the Action News Jax Now app for your smart TV and click here<\/a> to stream Action News Jax live.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In addition to the new UF grad school coming to downtown, a prestigious culinary school may also be…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":67042,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[1913,38965,37804,39257,116,118,117],"class_list":["post-67041","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-jacksonville","tag-action-news","tag-culinary-institute-of-america","tag-culinary-school","tag-derek-shroyer","tag-jacksonville","tag-jacksonville-headlines","tag-jacksonville-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67041","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=67041"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67041\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/67042"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=67041"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=67041"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=67041"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}