WS Chronicle

KQC Investors LLC intends to buy the Mudpies Downtown East location and transition it into a Foundations Early Learning Center.

The timeline is uncertain when that will happen but Northwest Child Development Centers (NWCDC), the nonprofit that operates Mudpies, will be in charge there through at least June. The leadership with both NWCDC and The Sunshine House, a Greenville, SC-based company that operates Foundations, plans for the transition to keep existing employees. They also said  that families that currently use the location shouldn’t see a disruption in childcare services.

The deal has the same structure as the sale of the Mudpies Downtown location on Poplar Street in 2016 to KQC, which leased that location to Sunshine House. It became a Foundations location and kept existing staff.

“The name on the building is not really what services the children, it’s the people within the building that provide that service to the children,” said NWCDC Executive Director Tony Burton.

Burton said that the families receiving tuition assistance at the Poplar Street location didn’t lose that assistance during the transition, and the same should be true for the 40 percent of children who are receiving assistance at the current location.

The Mudpies Downtown East opened in 2012 on East Seventh Street and currently serves 150 children, with the capacity to serve 180. It has 30 full-time employees. It provides childcare for ages birth through 5 as well as before- and after-school care for ages up to 12. Half of the children served at the location are minorities.

It’s located on land that was purchased from the city and the nonprofit also received several city loans to help open the location. KQC plans to take over two of those remaining loans and is asking for forgiveness on a third that’s $108,300.

Burton said maintaining  a facility of that size as it starts to age, along with other rising costs associated with providing childcare, combined with shrinking funding sources for the nonprofit childcare model prompted NWCDC’s board to sell the location. He said when direct federal funds ended, NWCDC had to turn to counties, whose support has also been cut. Forsyth County’s funding has dwindled over the years, and the nonprofit received no local county money this fiscal year, which it had been using for tuition assistance.

“Nonprofit funding is becoming very limited. We’re all fighting for the same dollars,” he said.

NWCDC has two other locations, one in King and the other in Mocksville. Burton said that the board is evaluating what it wants to do with those locations. He said the current nonprofit model for childcare is becoming obsolete and expects NWCDC to change and adapt for the future.

Sunshine House President and CEO Wes Wooten said that the current Foundations location downtown is doing well, and is becoming a greater part of the fabric of the community. He expects the same will be true for the Downtown East location as well.

“I think it’s going to be a great opportunity for us to continue to be a resource as the downtown area works on more revitalization projects,” said Wooten. “The need for care down there is going to continue to increase.”