LEBANON — The City Council has approved a lease agreement for a nonprofit to build a childcare center on a city-owned property on Mascoma Street.
The move, approved 8-1 at a City Council meeting last week, is the farthest Lebanon has progressed toward building a childcare center on city property since beginning the project in 2023.
The Boys & Girls Club will build, own, and operate the facility, which is expected to accommodate 50 children. The nonprofit will have to create a design that suits the new property and has secured over $4 million in state, federal and private funds for the project.
Per the new lease, the nonprofit will pay the city $1 a year to use the 0.77-acre property. It will also be required to provide annual operations reports, including how many staff are employed, how many families are being served and where they live.
The approval clears a hurdle that the city and nonprofit have been working through all year.
The property is “not the most ideal location, but certainly an adequate location that allowed the Boys and Girls Club to consider it as a place for a childcare facility with adequate parking on a main road,” said City Manager Andrew Hosmer at the meeting.
Though voters granted the School Board permission to negotiate a lease to build the facility on Seminary Hill in March and the City Council granted Hosmer the same authority, the city, school district and Boys & Girls Club of Central and Northern New Hampshire never reached a final lease agreement.
Last month, the school board voted 4-4 against moving forward with leasing land on Seminary Hill for the project, throwing a wrench into plans that had been underway since February.
The same night, City Manager Andrew Hosmer presented an alternative plan to the City Council to relocate the project to city-owned land at 226 Mascoma Street, next to the Sacred Heart Cemetery.
The city purchased the property in 2022 for $235,000, according to property records. The plan was to expand the cemetery if necessary. There is a 1,500-square-foot single-family home on the property that the city plans to demolish.
The Lebanon Fire Department may burn the property down for training, Hosmer said at the meeting.
Last week, the City Council reviewed a proposed lease for the Mascoma Street property. The group voted 8-1 at the Wednesday meeting, with Councilor Eric Cole opposed, to execute the lease.
Cole said he was confused by how quickly the new plan was developed and felt there should be more opportunities for neighbors to comment on the updated proposal. His other concerns included how the Boys & Girls Club plans to find staff when other facilities have struggled, whether the increased competition would harm Upper Valley facilities, and why the nonprofit is not paying a rent closer to market rate.
“I was in a state of kerfuffle, I have to admit, at the end of the last meeting,” Cole told the Council. “The paint hadn’t dried on Seminary Hill, and we’ve got 226 (Mascoma Street) in our crosshairs already. How did that happen?”
“The paint hadn’t dried because we didn’t paint anything there because it dropped dead,” Hosmer countered.
Hosmer said it became relatively clear that the project would not come to fruition even before the school board vote. He started looking into other properties in anticipation of the original plan being defeated.
The Upper Valley has a severe and documented shortage of available childcare. It takes many families months to find childcare providers, while others give up, take time off due to childcare challenges, or make other arrangements to care for their children.
Mayor Doug Whittlesey said if the Boys & Girls Club paid a fair-market lease on the property, it would not be financially viable.
“It does become fundamentally a question of do we want to provide a childcare facility that we desperately need,” Whittlesey said at the meeting.
