Estes Park board gives consensus approval to child care facility master plan

The Estes Park Town Board on Tuesday gave consensus approval to a child care facility master plan that recommends expanding existing providers and redeveloping current spaces before pursuing new construction. Consultants said those near- and midterm strategies are better aligned with local needs and the town’s budget than building a large new child care center on a single site.

The plan was presented as part of a Colorado Department of Local Affairs grant-funded project tied to the town’s child care strategy and future decisions about using 6E funds for facilities. Alethea Gomez, Colorado executive director at EPIC, said the town’s best-aligned strategies are a child-care-friendly land use and zoning framework and a public-private child care infrastructure partnership. She said the “lowest cost, shortest term, lightest lift” would be to work with existing buildings and existing supply rather than focus first on a town-owned child care building.

Gomez outlined a three-phase roadmap: near-term expansion of existing providers over the next two years, midterm redevelopment of underused spaces over two to five years, and new construction only as a longer-term option beyond five years. She said that, based on the data and stakeholder conversations behind the plan, “building a big childcare center on a single site is not well aligned with community needs or budgetary considerations for the town.”

The consultants said infant and toddler care remains the valley’s biggest shortage. A presentation slide identified a 55-child gap in that age group, and Gomez said expanding two existing providers and redeveloping two child care facilities could “almost nearly mitigate the entire infant and toddler gap within 5 years,” though she added that workforce wages and other factors were outside the project’s scope and could affect that timeline.

Mayor Pro Tem Marie Cenac said the work was supported by a DOLA grant and fits into the town’s 2026 planning for how 6E funds could be used for facilities and facility expansion across the valley. As the discussion ended, Cenac asked the board to accept the plan “as a part of our data gathering” and said it would still need to be formally presented for the grant.

Mayor Gary Hall said the board was acting by consensus rather than taking a formal vote. After asking members for their assent, Hall said he saw enough thumbs-up to represent consensus. Cenac said the plan would help set up “next steps and recommendations, not only for some of the development code barriers but also for expanding some facilities.”