Sadie Campbell, 19, watches over Anna, left, Eva, center, and Stahley on Tuesday in the infant room of a new child care center, The Discovery Preschool, in the Thomas B. Stewart Legislative Office Building.
Blue Shibler, owner of The Discovery Preschool in the Thomas B. Stewart Legislative Office Building, listens to 3- and 4-year-old children talk during snack time on Tuesday.
Story last updated at 11/25/2009 - 10:46 am
A new child care center that will help meet the needs of legislators with children opened downtown last week.
Owner Blue Shibler said construction delayed a planned October opening until last Wednesday. She and her staff of eight will care for as many as 35 children.
About 30 percent of the day care center's enrollment will be made up of children whose parents work for the Legislature. The rest are the children of parents who work for the state and a handful of parents who work for the city or private industry.
The Legislative Council set the enrollment priorities last year.
The new center would help serve child care needs of downtown and Douglas families, but the opening offsets a couple of other general child care programs that have closed, said Nikki Morris, Southeast Alaska's family services coordinator for the Association for the Education of Young Children.
The net result will be only a few additional openings in a community that does not have enough child care, Morris said. Her organization is in contact with 60 families per month looking for referrals, she said.
Shibler's business, called Discovery Preschool, had a waiting list six months before it opened in the new location. Shibler won the contract from the Legislative Affairs Agency to run the center about a year ago.
She worked in Juneau's Montessori program for seven years and ran Discovery Preschool since 2005. She expanded the business to open under the new contract.
"It's going really well," Shibler said Monday. "The kids seem happy. I have a fantastic staff and we're finally rolling."
The center is located next to the Capitol in the old Scottish Rite Masonic Temple at 206 Fourth St.
The city bought the 1928 building from the local Freemasons and transferred it to the Legislature for $1. It was renamed the Thomas B. Stewart Legislative Office Building in May and renovated for about $1.5 million.
The interior of the child care center has new touches such as dark wood trim and child-sized bathrooms. Each of three classrooms has high ceilings and large windows to light up the tiny furniture, new toys and educational equipment.
Punch-list items are being completed by Silverbow Construction Inc. for the rest of the building, said Pam Varni, executive director of the Legislative Affairs Agency.
In addition to the day care facility, the building will house offices, records for both sides of the Legislature, and conference and committee rooms. It also will have a public lounge.
• Contact reporter Kim Marquis at 523-2279 or kim.marquis@juneauempire.com.
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