The College Park City Council is considering turning a former school site on Calvert Road into a University of Maryland-affiliated day care facility within two years, Mayor Patrick Wojahn said.
Renovations for the facility, which would cost nearly $6 million, would be contracted through Bright Horizons, an early education and preschool provider. The child care would have 120 seats for children younger than 5 years old whose parents or guardians are university employees or College Park residents, and spaces would be available for residents based on the city’s financial contribution, District 3 Councilwoman Stephanie Stullich said.
The city has the option to financially contribute to improvements of the current building’s location, including rebuilding and renovating the site of the former Friends School on Calvert Road. It could also contribute to the land and the building as a 40-year lease, meaning the city would rent the site to this university and not be involved with the renovations, Stullich said.
“I’d like to see us do something along these lines,” Wojahn said. “We still have to figure out what kind of investment we have to make in it.”
Renovation plans would demolish an addition as well as city code enforcement offices, which are housed in the building, to construct a new structure that would “meet the needs of the child care center,” Stullich said. If the city rejects the proposal, this university has a second location option near M Square Research Park, she added.
Ideally, this university and city will support the creation of the facility, as there is a shortage of local child care options — and tuition at the daycare would cover ongoing cost, Stullich said.
Child care is a “huge need,” in the city, said District 3 Councilman Robert Day, who supports the proposal.
The decision to build a new facility at the Calvert Road location is contentious for city residents, who previously rejected proposals to develop in the area because of traffic concerns, Stullich said. But this proposal is a “win-win” for the city, because “it will help to meet a need in the community for more child care, for more high-quality child care,” she said.
The council needs to hear from Calvert Hills and other city residents before making a decision, District 4 Councilwoman Mary Cook said. She added that the cost of the day care program could be “very expensive,” and that she would prefer to see something more affordable.
“I’m concerned about cost; I’m concerned about the residents in general,” Cook said. “I’m concerned about what residents will benefit, and how many of them will benefit, from [the child care facility].”
Carlo Colella, the university’s vice president of administration and finance, said the university has spent years seeking a child care service that could also benefit the city.
“We have a wonderful Center for Young Children on campus, but that only accommodates a certain number of students, and the demand is far greater than that,” Colella said. The Center for Young Children on campus does not accept children younger than 3, he noted.
For Day, acquiring a site for the center is only one part of the local child care issue.
“The addition of this school will not solve the big problem. This is one part of a multi-faceted solution we’re going to have to come up with,” Day said.
