Opening soon: more daycares
Thanks to the city’s plan to devote $4 million in the 2009 capital budget for three childcare centres, Thorncliffe Park families will soon have a more accommodating place to send their kids.
The Jenner Jean-Marie Community Centre, located at 48 Thorncliffe Park Dr., is undergoing an expansion that will give the gathering place more recreational space, a bigger library and at the fore of the project, a better daycare.
“When the community centre was built 10 years ago before amalgamation, the daycare was created almost as an afterthought,” said Don Valley West councillor John Parker.
“Thorncliffe is a large community and certainly the daycare space wasn’t big enough to meet the needs of all of the families here,” he said. “So a plan has been in the works for sometime to expand the centre and we finally got working on that last year.”
Parker says a private daycare operator set up shop in the original space, which was carved out of the building as an ad-hoc measure, to take in pre-schoolers and school-age children. The call for expansion came when the city identified the particular needs of infants and toddlers for spaces of their own.
“There were concerns expressed by some people that this meant that the older children were being left out in the cold and I’ve been at pains to explain that no, that’s not the case,” he said. “They are being taken care of by other recreational programs at the centre and Thorncliffe Park Public School.”
Parker said after years of mentioning the project in the capital plan, including it in the 2009 capital budget is “confirmation (that) the money will actually be spent next year”.
He also said it heralds the project’s move from a planned venture to a committed endeavour.
The newly renovated community centre is slated to open in the spring.