Palomar College, Manufacturer Join to Create Day Care Center

A San Marcos manufacturer, a developer and Palomar College are teaming up in California’s first joint venture between a community college and a private corporation to develop a day care center.

The board of Palomar College approved a three-year lease agreement Tuesday to operate a day care center in the La Costa Meadows Industrial Center in San Marcos.

Anthony Brothers, the developer, plans to donate $100,000 in improvements to the $1-million center, and Hunter Industries plans to kick in $90,000 in start-up costs.

The idea for the center started with Ann Hunter-Welborn, partner in Hunter Industries, who said she remembers how hard it was to take care of her own child while she was getting the company started.

“I am really doing this on intuition,” she said. “I just feel real certain that it’s going to fulfill a need, and I don’t really care where the need is. If it ends up that it’s really not that useful for our employees, then that’s OK.”

Palomar College runs a 180-child day care center on campus that serves primarily children of students and college employees and has a waiting list of almost 500 children, a college spokesman said.

The new child care facility will serve 86 children ages 2 to 5, with priority given to children of Hunter Industries employees, Hunter-Welborn said. It will be run by Palomar College.

Children of other employers in the industrial center and children of Palomar College employees will be given second priority, Hunter-Welborn said.

The day care center will be staffed by Palomar College employees with degrees and credentials in early childhood development, said Mary Anne Giardina-Rodgers, director of the college’s existing day care operation.

Giardina-Rodgers said the center will also provide a training ground for Palomar College’s 150 students in the college’s credential program.

“It is unique for a community college to join hands to cooperate with industry and come up with a plan to offer child care,” Giardina-Rodgers said.

Construction of the day care center, which will be about 4 1/2 miles from the college, will be completed by May, Giardina-Rodgers said.

Hunter-Welborn, whose company employs 500 people, said she does not know how many of her workers will take advantage of the day care center, but she knows that she could have used one when she started the business nine years ago.

“I had my third child just after we started the company. Being the co-owner, I could bring her to work with me,” said Hunter-Welborn, who toted her daughter to work for six months.

“It would have been wonderful if there had been a child care center nearby that I could have taken her to and still be able to go see her during the day.”

Hunter-Welborn said her company’s motives in supporting the day care center were not completely altruistic:

“It will be a great recruiting tool for people that we are trying to hire to say that we have a child care facility right down the street.”

The college will lease the 7,680-square-foot center for 85 cents a square foot, said Tom Anthony of Anthony Brothers.