ITHACA, N.Y. — The long-awaited Ithaca Community Childcare Center expansion is finally ready to move forward.
IC3, a nonprofit organization that offers childcare to over 250 children at three Ithaca locations, is planning to expand capacity and services to address barriers to the workforce for parents by providing after school and part-day toddler and pre-kindergarten programming. Plans were submitted to the Town of Ithaca Planning Board late last week.
This expansion will add four classrooms, improved and expanded utility space, relocate the front entrance and offices for better security and centralize operations to help respond to the growing demand for quality and affordable childcare in the Greater Ithaca area.
The state of New York’s economic development wing, Empire State Development, awarded IC3’s full request of $790,000 to enable the $3.3 million project to move forward.
The project, located at their main campus on 579 Warren Road, will create about 6,800 square feet of new classroom and office space along with renovations to approximately 4,300 square feet of the existing 16,000 square-foot building which was built in 1987. The project will also add 28 parking spaces, new exterior lighting, landscaping, and new stormwater management facilities.
“Currently, they rent the space needed for after-school care in an offsite location. The new addition would host between 60 and 80 children ranging in age from five to 10 years old, Monday through Friday during the school year. lC3 is also planning to add restroom access from the playground to improve supervision by keeping the restroom in close proximity to outdoor activities,” said project architect Kim Michaels in her letter to town planners.
Local firm HOLT Architects will be the building architect, and Trowbridge Wolf Michaels Landscape Architecture, also of Ithaca, will be the landscape architect. Environmental review of the project should will be limited, as expansions of educational facilities that are 10,000 square feet or less are considered minor “Type II” projects under state environmental quality review (SEQR) code.
The project is the second attempt by IC3 to expand its facilities in recent years. In 2006, the town of Ithaca Planning Board approved a 6,000 square-foot addition to the childcare center, but the project never moved forward. The project joins other recent new or expanded childcare facilities in Tompkins County, including the Harriet Gianellis Childcare Center run by Tompkins Community Action at 701 Spencer Road in Ithaca city, and the Arthur Kuckes Childcare Center at Tompkins Cortland Community College.