Construction for New Denver child care centre on time and on budget

The Goat Mountain Child Care Centre in New Denver is on pace to open on September 8.

The new centre is being built at Lucerne Elementary School and will be create 30 school-age spaces and 16 spaces for children under the age of 12.

School District 10 superintendent Terry Taylor said the scope of the project recently had to be changed considerably.

"When we received tenders for the project, the lowest one still came in at $85,000 over budget. As a result, we decided not to accept any bids," said Taylor.

We decided to hire a project manager rather than a general contractor, who would've had to increase their costs on all their different sub-trades. This is a way to keep the project in check."

Taylor said that New Denver contractor Laurie Hicks has been hired as the project manager to keep the project on time and on budget.

Chris Fairbank, a former architect for the project, recently suffered a stroke and is no longer able to continue work on the centre.

Plumbing, electrical and other construction work still have to be done to get the centre up and running.

Once completed, two child care rooms, two accessible washrooms and a kitchen will be located at the centre. A new play space and an accessible ramp will also be located outside the facility.

A recent survey conducted by SD 10 showed that 80 per cent of the respondents didn't think there were enough child care spaces available in the district.

A new child care centre is also in the works in Nakusp.

The total budget for the Goat Mountain Child Care Centre is $742,000.