GRAND CHUTE, WI (WTAQ-WLUK) — A new grant is helping pay for a new childcare facility in the Fox Valley.
It will help handle a childcare shortage in Outagamie County.
A vacant building in the Town of Grand Chute will soon become a childcare center thanks to a $250,000 grant. The addition will create room for 100 kids.
There are more than 1,200 kids waiting for an open child care slot in Outagamie County.
The new partnership between the county and the YMCA of the Fox Cities will help reduce that number by about 10%.
“So there has been a lot of projects that I’ve had on a list of things to do as County Executive, and this has been there for quite some time, and it’s a very important project. I think it’s gonna serve us very well,” Outagamie County Executive Tom Nelson said.
The center will be right across the street from the Brewster Village Campus nursing home.
Nelson said the opening of this childcare facility will offer a convenient place for county employees to enroll their kids.
“This is a fringe benefit that employees now not just are asking for, expecting, but even demanding. And so this is also going to be a very good recruitment tool as well,” Nelson said.
The project will cost a total of about $2.5 million.
The county is helping with about $2 million of that, the rest of the renovations will be paid for using the grant and support from the YMCA.
The Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation (WEDC) is providing the grant.
The organization said economic development only succeeds if parents have access to affordable child care.
“This was a wonderful use of our funds to help start this facility so that families could take care of themselves and then go to their jobs and earn a living for their families,” WEDC Secretary and CEO John W. Miller said.
The YMCA will operate the new facility and expects to hire about 20 staff members.
“We’re getting calls daily from families looking for care, families that are moving to the community, maybe a parent is trying to go back into the workforce and they’re trying to find care for maybe not just one child, but two children, and they’re really struggling to find care,” YMCA Fox Cities Association Early Childhood Executive Director Ashley Brockman said.
Nelson said renovation work will begin soon and is expected to open in the fall of 2027.
As of last week Tuesday, Wisconsin’s $110 million childcare subsidy had expired.
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