Newly renovated Merrimack YMCA child care center brings officials for a visit

Renovations to the largest child care center in New Hampshire have caught the attention of local and national officials. 

The Merrimack YMCA Early Education Center, a branch of the YMCA of Greater Nashua, hosted U.S. Sen. Maggie Hassan on Monday for a tour, a month after a visit from Gov. Kelly Ayotte for the ribbon-cutting ceremony at the end of a two-year renovation project. 

As teachers walked children to and from their classrooms for activities, Hassan got a tour of the facility, which hosts the state’s largest licensed program and the YMCA’s largest single-site child care program nationwide, with more than 400 children. She saw new classrooms, freshly painted walls, and new floors. 

The space was formally an athletic club, a storefront, and a nightclub before the YMCA took it over in 1993. When Elizabeth Witmer, the director of the Merrimack Y’s child care program, started working there 20 years ago, the center had four kindergarten classrooms. It has since grown to 19 classrooms and offers care for children as young as 6 weeks old. 

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The facility had undergone small renovations in the past, but after the COVID-19 pandemic and increased need for child care, Witmer and her team knew they wanted a space that reflected the quality of the program. Thus began the two-year process of seeking funding, planning, and eventually renovating the facility, the majority of which was completed last December. 

The center’s makeover, which cost over $2.7 million, was funded through community donations from banks, businesses, YMCA members, and individual donors. The renovation included permanent classroom walls to replace temporary dividers, a renovated kitchen area to replace the bar from the former nightclub, and new break rooms for staff. 

“[The donors] felt like we had the capacity to [expand] community impact and that it would be helpful for our building to look more like the quality that we’re offering,” Witmer said last month. “The goal always was to find a way to get the financial support to renovate.”

During the walkthrough Monday, Hassan discussed the “quiet policy wins” by congressional Democrats this year, including increases in Head Start funding and a bill to fund child care for parents who work nontraditional hours. She said there is bipartisan momentum in Congress to improve child care nationwide, though there is disagreement over funding.