Markham daycare rejects lease extension, will close doors

Yorkregion.com
Sept. 29, 2015
By Amanda Persico

Ultimately, it was lack of time, according to the board of directors, that sealed the fate for the Town’s Little Children (TLC) daycare in Markham, which has been operating inside the Markham Civic Centre for 25 years.

The daycare will end operations by the end of month and close its doors by the end of October.
After several back-and-forth lease extension offers from the daycare’s landlord - the city - TLC has decided to close.

The daycare board of directors posted a letter on its website, rejecting the latest lease extension offered by the city last week.

According to the online letter, the city offered a lease extension about two weeks prior TLC’s closing date of September.

An initial lease extension was initially asked for in the spring, said TLC board of directors president Kristina Drosos.

When looking for other locations, the board learned it could cost between $850,000 to $1 million to retrofit a location and make it suitable for a daycare.

“When you look at the numbers, sometimes you think it is unattainable,” Drosos said. “But if we were given the lease extension when we asked for it, that would have given us a year and a half of fundraising time.”

Last week, the city re-offered its one-year lease extension to TLC with the condition the daycare finds another location by the new year.

Earlier this month, the city offered a one-year lease extension, which was rejected by the daycare due to lack of secured enrolment from current and waitlisted parents for the upcoming year

“This is the financially responsible thing to do,” Drosos said in an interview. “We close down now, we do it with dignity and grace.”

TLC’s September enrolment dropped to less than 50 per cent.

“Closing down costs a lot of money,” Drosos said. “We had no other option. We could not keep going with 50 per cent less children.”

The daycare had an obligation to its staff to ensure the proper amount of severance could be paid out to the 13 full-time and four part-time staff.

Accepting the city’s one-year lease extension would mean running the daycare at a deficit, Drosos added.

When the daycare first opened, it paid about $200 a month in rent, which increased to $2,300 a month - still well below market rent. Under the city’s new one year lease, rent would rise to about $7,000 a month.

The daycare has opted to provide job counselling services to help with job searches and resume building for staff, some of whom have more than 20 years’ experience with the daycare.
The daycare also saw to it that each enrolled child is placed with a licensed daycare facility.

The letter also outlined a number of initiatives taken by TLC to find a new location, including working with several real estate brokers and vetting more than 40 potential locations.

“It felt like we were sent on a wild goose chase,” Drosos said. “Some locations had mould, there was asbestos. It would have taken time to build out.”

A new location could take one to two years to finalize.

The daycare also had to contend with zoning issues, where many locations were not zoned for a daycare facility. Ironing out zoning issues could tack on another year at least, she said.

“We put feelers out there,” Drosos said. “But Markham is really tight for space. We put money aside as much as we could. We just didn’t know the time frame.”