Santa Rosa to lease former church to day care company that lost facility in 2017 wildfires

A day care company that lost its Larkfield location in the 2017 wildfires plans to open a new Santa Rosa site next year in city-owned church property vacated by Lutherans who have since moved in with a Presbyterian congregation.

Santa Rosa spent $1.1 million in November to buy the 3.8-acre property on Fulton Road, which previously housed the Thanksgiving Lutheran Church. That purchase paves the way for the city to build a new sewer station on the land a decade from now, replacing a struggling older facility nearby at the intersection of Fulton Road and West College Avenue.

The Santa Rosa City Council on Tuesday formally consider leasing the former church land to Child Family Community Inc., a private company that owns the Mark West Community, Hidden Valley Community and Humboldt Community preschools in Northern California. Child Family Community would pay the city about $5,600 per month for 10 years under the lease, according to city documents.

Jill Scott, the city’s real estate manager, said the day care pitch emerged as the favorite after the city received four unsolicited offers at or above market value earlier this year. The decision secured the initial endorsements of the City Council and Board of Public Utilities behind closed doors earlier this year, after the council in February identified promoting affordable child care as a goal.

“They had some great offers,” Scott said. “It was a hard decision, but child care is a Tier 2 priority and a very important council goal for them.”

She noted that the city initially sought to buy only a small part of the property for the sewer project before deciding to purchase the entire site. “We didn’t intentionally buy a church,” she said.

The Mark West Community Preschool, which opened in January 2014 off Old Redwood Highway, was destroyed in the October 2017 fires. The city will let the preschool’s owners occupy the church property for six months before rent is due, giving them time to transform the Fulton Road church into a day care facility.

A shortage of early childhood opportunities in Sonoma County “is really getting to crisis levels,” said Renee Whitlock-Hemsouvanh, who co-owns the day care business with Jenny Kenyon. She said the deal illustrates the potential for governments and large companies to partner with for-profit businesses like hers and nonprofits alike to support day care.

“I think it’s starting to set a standard for our community,” she said.

The number of licensed child care homes in Sonoma County has been dropping since 2012, according to the Community Child Care Council of Sonoma County. At the same time, a quarter of the area’s lead preschool teachers and directors are eyeing retirement, according to a 2018 survey.

The dwindling number of child care options has helped to drive up the average cost of enrolling a child in child care to over $1,000 a month, according to the council, known as 4Cs.

“We do know we’ve seen a huge decrease in the supply of licensed family child care providers in the last five years,” said Melanie Dodson, executive director of 4Cs.

Whitlock-Hemsouvanh said her company still plans to re-open the location that burned in 2017 wildfires and is in the process of raising the $2 million it needs to rebuild.

The Thanksgiving Lutheran congregation, which had been looking to shed its expensive mortgage, made timely lease payments before moving out, according to the city. Since February, the Thanksgiving congregation has shared space with the Knox Presbyterian Church on West Third Street.

Before the day care opens next spring, Whitlock-Hemsouvanh said her company would install new fire alarm and sprinkler systems, redo floors, create a playground, and install child-size toilets - in other words, all the work necessary to turn a house of worship into a day care.

“We need to make a lot of changes,” she said.

You can reach Staff Writer Will Schmitt at 707-521-5207 or will.schmitt@pressdemocrat.com.