Center City Academy, a reboot of the Downtown Day Care Center, to close on land

After years of work, hope and dreams, the new Center City Academy is taking a giant step toward becoming a reality this month with the purchase of one acre downtown at Kellogg and Topeka.

“We hope that we can start finalizing plans in 2021,” said Rebecca Moore, who is on the board of directors for the nonprofit, which is a day care that calls itself an early childhood development center.

“It’s really going to depend on the community,” Moore said of how fast the project comes together. “They have to decide to get behind us.”

She said the center could be a way to help downtown’s many businesses attract and retain talent by helping care for their children.

“It’s our goal to show corporate Wichita this is a service . . . their workforce needs and will help them ultimately retain a viable workforce,” Moore said. “These employees have to have childcare that is affordable.”

She said Center City Academy is “basically a reboot of the Downtown Day Care Center.”

That was in downtown for 43 years, mostly at area churches until the center lost its final lease in 2014.

“One hundred families didn’t have childcare,” Moore said.

A group has spent the intervening six years restructuring a new concept.

“We are a holistic early childhood development center that will serve children and families from diverse backgrounds,” Moore said.

The previous center served mostly low-income families. The plan is for the new center to be more diverse. Payments will be on a sliding scale according to need. Once again, the center hopes to serve about 100 families.

The new property is at the southeast corner of Kellogg and Topeka, which is just east of the QuikTrip at Kellogg and Broadway.

“It’s in a very high-visibility area (and) high-accessibility area,” Moore said.

She said it was a challenge to find property to fit the nonprofit’s budget.

“We looked at a lot of older buildings.”

To refurbish any of those and meet guidelines for day care environments was too costly. Moore said that “the better choice became to build.”

She said it was good luck to find the property at Kellogg and Topeka.

“A one-acre vacant lot is almost unheard of.”

The board thought it would be further along by this point, but the pandemic has slowed its efforts.

Moore said it’s a huge milestone to be closing on the land, but she said, “We still have a lot of money to raise.”

She said the group will close on the property Dec. 30 but still has to hire a development director and raise $1.5 million to $2 million before construction can start.

“We have a lot of work in front of us. It’s not going to be easy, but nothing good ever is.”

Moore said that the center is so important because from birth to age five are crucial years in child development and brain development, the results of which then last forever.

“It’s such a great opportunity to really change lives for a lifetime.”

This story was originally published December 29, 2020 at 4:47 AM.