VIDEO: Sudden closure prompts local daycare crisis in Kelowna

The Building Blocks Educare on Gordon Drive in Kelowna looks after about 200 children.

But families were informed this week that the doors close for good at the end of February, to make way for an apartment building development.

The supply of daycare in Kelowna was already short of demand.

The Building Blocks closure just makes it worse.

A lot worse.

"It's going to be tough," said Melissa Hunt at Childhood Connections in Kelowna.

Her organization helps families find daycare placement.

"It's going to be very difficult for those parents from the Building Blocks Educare to find childcare in this short of notice," said Hunt.

The Gordon campus of Building Blocks will close on Feb. 28, while the Sutherland campus will continue to operate after it was purchased by ProducKIDvity and will change hands on April 1.

But it's the Gordon Drive closure that has the local Childcare society concerned.

"Right now there's a two-year waiting list for children under three, so infant-toddler children there's at least a two-year waiting list we're hearing," said Hunt.

"There aren't any spots in the Central Okanagan for children."

Owners Laura Forbes and Brie Elson have operated Building Blocks in Kelowna for close to 15 years.

They say they have been actively exploring potential relocation options since their leased property on Gordon Drive was sold unexpectedly in the summer of 2021.

“We realized that losing our building was virtually the same as losing our business and we would be starting all over again, but we’d be starting all over again in a very different economic climate and a very different industry,” explained Forbes.

"I think it's going to be very hard," said Joey Podavin as he dropped his son off at Building Blocks.

"There's big waiting lists."

Tanya Touya has had two daughters at the facility over the years.

"Everybody's panicked right now," she said.

"I really don't know what I can do. It seems like there's no hope."

It's expected that the closure will force some parents to seek unlicensed daycare.

In BC it's legal for parents to care for two other children along with their own, without licensing.

Hunt says she's hoping that the development that's going in place of Building Blocks ends up including a daycare.

"We heard that there is," she said, "but there hasn't been any confirmation that there is going to be."

There are some childcare spaces that will be available within the year in a local school district-supported program.

"There are six new centres being developed in the next few years so hopefully by the fall of 2023 they'll be open, but from what we've heard, those are almost all full as well."

And in the meantime, it does nothing for the families left in the lurch by the Building Blocks closure.

"It's the kids who suffer the most," said Hunt.

"Those kids have these great bonds and connections with their educator and with their friends in their classroom. And that's being completely broken up by this closure which is sad for the community."

There have been early discussions involving some of the childhood educators currently working at Building Blocks to move over to other daycares that have the physical space to expand, but it's all very uncertain.