Avon, Vail Valley Foundation are full steam ahead on effort to create an early child care center
As of now, the center will have 165 spaces for children ages 0-5 and open in late 2026
Town of Avon/Courtesy image
The unique collaboration between Avon and the Vail Valley Foundation to address one of the valley’s most pressing needs — early child care — is starting to take shape.
“3,000 (Eagle County) families that need child care today can’t get it,” said Mike Imhof, president of the Vail Valley Foundation, in a project update presentation to the Avon Town Council during its Tuesday, Aug. 13 meeting. “Half of them are solving it through friends, family, neighbors, shared nanny, you name it. The other half have no option.”
Some 800 to 900 new child care spots are needed to effectively eliminate the problem, according to Imhof.
“What all the data says is the No. 1 area or population with the greatest need is Eagle/Gypsum. However, the needs are right here, midvalley, Edwards, Avon,” Imhof said. “Our objective is to, with this opportunity working with you all, it becomes a model that we can replicate and continue to do up and down the valley.”
In 2022, Avon was approached by the Vail Valley Foundation with a proposal: If the town provides the land, the foundation will build an early childhood education center.
Support Local Journalism
Traer Creek dedicated 3.5 acres to Avon in 2014 to create an educational facility. The proposed center in Avon would provide 165 spots for children between the ages of 0 and 5.
The partnership is innovative. Avon will own the land while the Vail Valley Foundation will take out a long-term lease on the building and be responsible for hiring a third party to run the school.
Timeline and funding of the project
“This is moving along quickly now, train is rolling fast,” Imhof said.
The general contractors for the construction will be selected by the end of September, and the early child care operator should be selected by the end of November.
Town staff are reviewing the lease agreement with the Vail Valley Foundation, which will come to the Town Council for a decision later in the fall. The project is currently going through the Village at Avon’s design review process. The Avon Town Council will also have the final say on the facility’s design, which will first go through the town’s Planning and Zoning Commission likely in September.
The 13,000-square-foot facility is estimated to cost $10 million to build.
“We believe that is a very solid number. However, we probably will not know 100% that $10 million is the right number until a general contractor has been secured and they’re able to do all the pricing for us,” Imhof said.
The Vail Valley Foundation board executive committee requires that the foundation’s capital projects are 80% funded before they can proceed. To hold to the planned timeline — with construction completed by early fall 2026, and education to begin shortly thereafter — the facility needs to have $8 million guaranteed by April 1, 2025.
The Vail Valley Foundation already has $4 million secured, and another $4 million “pending, that we have 99% confidence is going to land sometime between now and probably Thanksgiving,” Imhof said.
The project also applied for $1.5 million in congressionally designated funding.
“If there is a functioning federal government going into the end of the year in 2025, it looks good that we might get that grant funding,” said Eric Heil, Avon’s town manager.
How do families access the facility?
Avon and the Vail Valley Foundation have both carefully considered pathways for families to access the center, both physically and financially. Neither organization has discussed an application at this point.
Physically, the town will put in a new bus stop to serve the school, as well as potential and existing housing in the area. There will also be an intentionally long drop-off queue built to avoid traffic backing up onto the street.
“I’m feeling pretty confident that there’s not going to be any issues because we’ve never seen traffic jams at Prater Lane (Play School),” Heil said.
Families will need to pay for their children to attend the early childhood education center.
In addition to fundraising for the construction, the Vail Valley Foundation is raising money to create a “board-directed restricted tuition assistance fund,” Imhof said. The fund will total $4 million, potentially $5 million, to fill gaps for families that cannot afford to pay the full tuition amount.
“The tuition assistance fund is really that last mile that allows us to make sure the playing field is level and that this facility can be used by all,” he said.
Avon asked for “some portion of tuition to be made available for lower-income families that might not be able to afford this as it is,” Heil said, as well as “some identification of priority for town of Avon employees.”
What happened to the attached housing?
When the project was initially proposed, the education facility was supposed to include 48 units of housing above and near the center. The housing portion of the project has since been separated from the school element.
Four main factors have hindered the housing portion of the project: Cost, safety concerns, timing and the site’s planned unit development designation.
The site is already designated for education under the planned unit development guide, enabling the project to move forward immediately. Adding housing to the project requires a planned unit development amendment, with an application and consent from Traer Creek. To put the early childhood education center in progress as quickly as possible, Avon and the Vail Valley Foundation decided to separate the two projects.
Additionally, the housing portion of the project is estimated to cost an additional $16 million, and the Vail Valley Foundation does not have funding set aside or sources identified at the moment.
“There was also the complexity that adding residential above an early childhood education school very much complicates the security issues, and keeping early education — of all schools, early education probably the most important — keeping that separate is probably a good idea for security,” Heil said.
Heil said that Traer Creek has agreed to place all planned 48 units of housing on the west side of the property, opposite the education center.
“It does work nicely to have the housing on the west side and the school somewhat separated on the east side,” Heil said. “So I wouldn’t say it’s a lost opportunity, it’s more of a big question mark.”
The Vail Valley Foundation is now regarding building the housing as a second phase of the project, and in the short-term are working with partners, including Avon, to ensure the facility’s estimated 35 employees will have somewhere to live.
