Another day-care option will soon be available to
Johns Hopkins families.
The YMCA of Central Maryland last week announced plans
to open a 7,000-square-foot child care center in the new
Harry and Jeanette Weinberg YMCA at Stadium Place, the
former site of Memorial Stadium. The center, which is
located across the street from Johns Hopkins at Eastern,
will have space for 92 children ages 2 to 6 years, and the
university has negotiated that up to 50 slots be reserved
for the children of Johns Hopkins faculty, staff and
students.
The 53,000-square-foot Stadium Place YMCA, slated to
open in fall 2004, will become the flagship facility of the
YMCA of Central Maryland, which currently provides day-care
services for approximately 4,000 children. It will feature
a swimming pool, wellness center, gymnasium and
multipurpose and meeting rooms, and will offer community
programming, including tutoring, mentoring and youth
athletic leagues.
The facility is a key piece of the 30-acre Stadium
Place residential community now under development.
Meg Sonneborn, deputy to the university's senior vice
president for finance and administration and acting vice
president for human resources, said that Johns Hopkins is
pleased to partner with the YMCA and to help offer a
much-needed resource to the university community.
"Having a day-care center as strategically located as
the Y at Stadium Place is a wonderful new option for
Hopkins families, particularly those parents working at
Homewood and Johns Hopkins at Eastern," Sonneborn said.
"This also provides an opportunity for Hopkins to
re-establish a former relationship with the Y."
From 1928 to 1969, the YMCA owned and operated
Levering Hall on the Homewood campus. Eugene Levering, a
major supporter of the YMCA, had provided $20,000 for a
YMCA and student activities building at the university's
former downtown campus. The building burned down, and after
the university moved to the Homewood campus, the insurance
money was supplemented by another donation from Levering
and by funds raised by students and alumni to build a new
Levering Hall/ YMCA. In 1969, the university exercised its
option in the original agreement with the human services
organization and purchased the building.
Sonneborn said that prior to the child-care center's
opening, university faculty, staff and students will have
first call on 50 spaces. Any slots not taken would be made
available to area residents. Prices have not yet been
determined.
In fall 2002, the university conducted a needs
assessment survey on behalf of the YMCA of Central Maryland
in order to determine the level of interest in child care
at Stadium Place. A total of 484 faculty, staff and
students participated in the survey. Based on the results,
Hopkins was projected to enroll about 50 children within
the first two years of the center's existence.
The YMCA child-care center arrangement is the second
effort taken by the university in the past three years to
provide day-care services for the Hopkins community.
The Johns Hopkins Family Center, a 20,000-square-foot
facility, opened in September 2001 in the former Church
Home Medical Office Building, located at the corner of
Broadway and Fairmont Avenue, just south of the East
Baltimore campus. The center, which is available to
affiliates from all Johns Hopkins divisions, has space for
156 children ages 6 weeks to 5 years. Bright Horizons
Family Solutions, an international child-care provider,
manages and runs the center, which is currently accepting
enrollments.
The YMCA at Stadium Place was made possible by a lead
gift from the Harry and Jeanette Weinberg Foundation, also
a major benefactor of Johns Hopkins' Harry and Jeanette
Weinberg Building, the clinical care cancer facility in
East Baltimore that opened in fall 2000.
More About Johns Hopkins Day-Care
Options
The Johns Hopkins Family Center (located south of the East
Baltimore campus)
Stadium Place YMCA (across from Johns Hopkins at
Eastern)
GO TO