Martensville council approves childcare centre expansion

A childcare centre expansion has been approved by Martensville city council, despite some objections from residents.

Luthern Early Learning Centres, which already has an established location in the community, at 502 5th Street North, proposed the expansion at a strip mall at 135/139 Centennial Drive South.

Early Learning Child Care director for Lutheran Early Learning Centers Tasha Merko said their goal was to provide more spaces for parents in the community.

“The need is definitely there,” she told CTV News. “The waitlist at my location alone is well over 200 families that, at this point, will never, ever see childcare in this community.

“I get waitlist requests daily. While at least I would say I average about four to five daily.”

The expansion would bring 54 new childcare spaces to Martensville, and 15 jobs, Merko said.

However, some residents questioned the location of the facility. Comments the city collected showed that some residents were concerned about the high level of traffic in the area and the noise that a childcare centre may bring to the neighbourhood.

“We strongly disagree,” one unnamed resident told the city.

“A childcare facility should never be next to a bar, nor to a busy street where incoming traffic from the highway comes in and the main street where all the traffic from local shopping and businesses are… Children should be in a residential area where it is safer. Last but not least as grandparents to young children we would never want our grandchildren on this street.”

Another unnamed resident was quoted in council documents as saying:

“As we do agree that Martensville is in need of more daycare facilities, we do not feel this is the right location and Centennial is a very busy street and with all the parents coming and going there are traffic concerns both on Centennial and 2nd St. S.”

Merko said the amount of traffic was something they’ve thought about too.

“When we did our risk assessments, we realized we had ways to kind of mitigate some of those concerns. Some of those being a second gated entrance to each classroom so that children would never have access to the front parking lot or Centennial without their parent’s supervision,” she said.

She also noted that staff was trained in keeping kids in their care safe.

“We are all trained in active supervision child management policies and have very strict procedures to ensure the safety of all the children.”

City mayor, Kent Muench told CTV News that the community was in high need of extra childcare spaces.

“It's one of the more regular pieces of feedback that I can receive from residents just about having access to licensed childcare spaces, and the difficulty to sort of access and find those spaces,” he said.

He added that many in the community want the project to move ahead.

“It's also a very central kind of good location,” he said. “I've also heard lots of feedback that they're quite excited for the proposal.”

The new facility is expected to be open sometime in 2023.