Martensville residents have concerns over proposed childcare centre

A childcare centre in Martensville is looking to expand in the community, but residents are concerned over the location of the proposed centre.

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

Executive director and expansion applicant, Kim Randall wrote in the council documents that the community is growing and does not have enough childcare space.

“With only 120 licensed childcare spaces servicing a population of 11,573 in 2021,” Randall wrote in her application to the City of Martensville, dated July 20, 2022.

“Our project will increase the amount of available licensed spaces to 175 for the fast-growing community.”

She said having more childcare spaces can attract young families and working parents to move to the community.

Martensville Mayor, Kent Muench told CTV News that extra childcare was needed in the community.

“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.

However, some residents are questioning the location of the facility. Comments the city has collected show that some residents are 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.”

In addition to concerns over the childcare centre being in a busy part of the community, some residents said they felt some of the nearby businesses may present a problem.

“There is also concern with the Adobe Bar being across the street. In the afternoons, there is extra traffic and a lot of those drivers will be coming and going at the end of work day and the odds of impaired drivers is quite high and poses a safety concern.”

Muench said that the space was zoned for commercial, which could be a bigger traffic problem than a childcare centre.

“There are certainly far many other uses, that would be non-discretionary. They could just move in. And they could potentially have far higher traffic volumes than a daycare.”

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.”

Muench said it was challenging to find the right space.

“I suppose they might be able to find a different space, but then you might run up to similar situations where you have an existing building or neighbours that aren't happy with the change in use, which is really what this is,” he said.

“It's built on zones so that it can have high traffic, high demand uses, and this space really, with, I think, 54 children, you're looking at 108, pick up and drop offs in a day. And they're staggered out between 7 a.m. and 6 p.m. That's not actually a lot of traffic compared to, you know, maybe a drive-thru coffee shop or something like that. We could have considerably more traffic.”

The issue will be up for discussion at the next council meeting, on Aug. 16.