Collins family gives $10M to Cal Poly Pomona

Nation's Restaurant News, May 10, 1999

POMONA, CA. Quick-service and family-dining pioneer James Collins and his wife, Carol, recently gave $10 million to the 25-year-old School of Hotel & Restaurant Management at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona. The gift makes the Collins family the largest individual donor in the history of the university since its founding through a land grant from cereal magnate W.K. Kellogg.

A onetime franchise agent for KFC in Southern California who acquired the Sizzler Family Steakhouse chain in 1967 and continues as its chairman, Collins has led two previous fund-raising campaigns for the School of Hotel & Restaurant Management. One was a $4 million effort that supported completion of the Collins Center for Hospitality Management in 1990, and the other was a $5 million project to finance a 22,000-square-foot expansion of the center.

Providing for laboratories and classrooms, the new gift also will establish a $1.2 million faculty chair for the school, which anticipates growing its enrollment from 450 to more than 700 students as a result of the expansion.