Public, Private Aid Brings Day Care Downtown

Downtown San Diego’s first nondenominational day-care center for preschool children will open in early February, culminating a decade-long effort to bring such a facility to the center city.

The center, to be at the Central Christian Church at 201 Fir St., will serve 40 to 45 children. It will be operated by the Downtown YMCA, and the $56,000 start-up cost is being borne by a coalition of public and private parties, including the City of San Diego, the Junior League of San Diego and some major downtown employers. Thus far, said Councilwoman Gloria McColl, who spearheaded the drive to bring day care downtown, corporate sponsors include Great American Savings, Home Federal Savings and Loan, Neyenesch Printers and Pacific Bell.

Enrollment for the center will begin late this month.

“Priority will be given to employees of the sponsoring businesses to enroll their children through the third week in January, after which time the remaining slots will be open to the public in general,” McColl said. Each of the sponsors, including the city, will be allowed to enroll as many as five children, and the openings are expected to fill up fast because surveys of the contributing businesses indicated that as many as 450 parents working downtown would be interested in using the center.

“We’re still looking for additional corporate sponsors,” McColl said. “We need to find sponsors to put up another $30,000 on top of the donations we already have. But we have no doubt we can clean that up very quickly.”

McColl, who has made day care one of her top priorities since joining the council, established the Downtown Child Care Project Committee in May of last year, working with the Junior League. The committee contacted more than 20 downtown firms seeking support for a downtown center, and a survey of employees at those firms showed that “their first priority was to find day care close to their place of employment,” according to Ann Spicer, a Junior League member.

The committee’s success followed 10 years of frustration over trying to fill the widely acknowledged need for day-care centers to serve downtown workers. In the last decade, there have been four city studies in support of a downtown center, but various factors blocked the efforts to open such a facility, including:

- The high cost of leasing space in downtown office buildings. Parents surveyed during the various city studies said they would be reluctant to patronize centers outside the exclusive, “safe” areas of downtown. Thus, the Gaslamp Quarter and the area south of Market Street, where cheaper rents would have made a day-care facility more economically feasible, were ruled out.

- State licensing requirements specifying ground-floor, outdoor play areas, which are difficult to provide in an expensive, densely built-up urban setting.

- City zoning requirements, which often dictate that ground space downtown be reserved for parking, landscaping and other amenities.

In the most recent city day-care study, Assistant City Manager John Lockwood said it was almost impossible to find a building downtown that met the criteria. In that study, Lockwood said, “An inventory of all possible (downtown) sites was accomplished, including public and private buildings, schools, churches, parks and agencies. All were excluded on the basis of unavailability or unsuitability.”

“We were very fortunate to find a property that offered an opportunity for a day-care center that would be totally economically self-sustaining and met all of the state’s requirements,” McColl said.

McColl also is working to establish a day-care center strictly for the 7,000 city employees working downtown. The Community Concourse and buildings in Balboa Park are being considered for such a facility, which McColl hopes would serve 100 children. The City Council hopes to find a private contractor to open the center.

“The chances are excellent for city employees if this other center comes to fruition and is successful,” McColl said. “The need for more centers has been demonstrated downtown, and we also hope this first center will convince downtown firms to provide day-care centers of their own for their employees.”