UNL day care plans put on hold

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By MATTHEW HANSEN / Lincoln Journal Star

A decades-long effort to build a child-care center on the University of Nebraska-Lincoln campus is again stalled after planners underestimated the cost of construction by nearly $1.4 million.

That’s $1.4 million university officials say they don’t have, so they’ve shelved plans to turn an annex of the old Whittier Junior High School into a center primarily for the children of UNL employees.

Christine Jackson, vice chancellor for business and finance, sent out apology letters this week to dozens of parents who expected to send their children to the center starting in August 2007.

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Lincoln attorney Jim Cada shares a book with University Day Care children at Bennett Martin Library as part of the Leaders are Readers program. (LJS File)

Lincoln attorney Jim Cada shares a book with University Day Care children at Bennett Martin Library as part of the Leaders are Readers program. (LJS File)

The apologies are sure to continue, especially to female professors who long have advocated a child-care center close to campus.

“I think that, through the years, there have been many times and ways we could’ve built (a child-care center) on campus,” said Mary Beck, an animal science professor and president of UNL’s Academic Senate.

“So many proposals have been made ... the reality is, this doesn’t seem to be a high priority for this university.”

Beck says she has “mountains of reports” in an office filing cabinet, some from as far back as the 1980s, that detail faculty support for a child-care center and various failed plans to build one.

More recently, though, it appeared the university finally had a solid plan to move the kids of UNL professors, staff and students  into a center much closer to City Campus.  The current university-affiliated YWCA center is more than a mile from the campus’ northern edge.

University planners estimated it would cost about $1.75 million to refurbish an annex on the old Whittier Junior High property at 22nd and W streets, turning it into a 13,000 square-foot center that could accommodate 150 children.

The University of Nebraska Board of Regents approved the plan, to be paid for with private trust funds, in November. Two months earlier, UNL Chancellor Harvey Perlman heralded the new center in his State of the University address.  

But then a second look at the renovation project revealed that plans to build one large restroom in the center wouldn’t work. Instead, they’d need to build six.

Child-safe windows would cost much more than originally estimated. So would heating and air conditioning systems, and the cost of construction itself.

The revised cost estimate: $3.1 million.

How did university planners lowball the cost by some $1.35 million?

“At times our passion for a project, the amount of heart we’ve put into that project, sometimes tends to have individuals kind of be a little bit blind to some of the realities,” Jackson said.

She no longer thinks it’s feasible to renovate the Whittier property. Instead, the university will begin searching for  a $1.7 million alternative, probably an off-campus site closer to campus and larger than the YWCA site.

The children of many UNL employees will now spend the 2007-2008 school year at the YWCA, Jackson said.

There’s no firm date for when a new UNL day care closer to campus may become a reality.

“The best situation would be that we would just get this issue resolved,” said Kelly Bartling, a university spokeswoman. “Unfortunately that’s not the case ... I know a lot of people are going to be disappointed.”

Reach Matthew Hansen at 473-7245 or mhansen@journalstar.com.