Groundbreaking turns heartbreaking for working parent
Richmond News
April 15, 2008
By: Nelson Bennett

Plans to replace the old Hamilton fire hall with a new daycare centre have been scrapped, due to escalating costs, the News has learned.

"I am very disappointed because Hamilton desperately needs childcare services out there," said Coun. Cynthia Chen, city council's liaison to Hamilton.

Nearly a year ago, local politicians gathered at the old fire hall site in Hamilton to break ground on a new daycare centre.

But the Society of Richmond Children's Centres officially announced it had scrapped those plans two weeks ago, and provincial funding that was to be spent on the new facility will now be spent elsewhere in East Richmond….

The Hamilton daycare centre was originally projected to cost $750,000. The B.C. government committed $500,000 to the project, and the City of Richmond donated the land. The Society of Richmond Children's Centres was to raise the remaining $250,000.

The original plan called for 75 daycare spaces, but was scaled back to just 25. Moreover, the building was to be a no-frills modular building.

But even that modest plan has become financially unworkable, thanks to soaring construction costs, a number of environmental and geotechnical issues, and the city's new floodplain bylaw ….

The original estimated cost of the project has ballooned from $750,000 to $1.5 million, said Nicky Byres, executive director of the Society of Richmond Children's Centres.

"We thought a couple of hundred thousand dollars would do it. The cost just escalated beyond our ability to catch up."…

As for the $500,000 from the province, it will now be spent on a daycare in East Richmond, Reid said.

Chen wonders how the daycare centre could be built anywhere else if it can't be built on donated land.

"If we can't afford to do this where the land was supplied to Hamilton for free, how are we going to build it in a different area?" Chen said.

Byres said her organization is now talking with a developer about a private-public partnership that would see a daycare centre built in East Richmond, but not in Hamilton, as part of a new residential development….

That is too far away for parents like Harmel, who had to put her three-year-old daughter in a … preschool in … New Westminster, because she couldn't find anything suitable in Hamilton or anywhere else in Richmond.

In fact, when her daughter was a year old, she couldn't find anything anywhere.

"I called 50 daycares within Richmond, New Westminster and North Delta, and could find nothing," she said. "The problem is not getting any better -- it's getting worse. Everyone who's moving here is a family with young children, so it's not going to get any better."…

"I have 400 people waiting for 12 infant spaces," Byers said….