COURTESY / JACKSON LABORATORY
Jackson Laboratory’s first on-campus childcare facility is slated to open in 2024.
October 19, 2022
Jackson Lab breaks ground for on-site childcare center
Courtesy / Jackson Laboratory
Fourth and fifth from left, Jackson Lab President and CEO Lon Cardon and COO and Executive Vice President Catherine Longley participate in a groundbreaking ceremony for the lab’s new child care facility.
Jackson Laboratory on Tuesday broke ground for a new childcare facility at its Bar Harbor campus, in what is considered a key employee recruitment and retention tool.
Construction on the 6,800-square-foot building is slated to begin within the next four to six weeks. The lab hired the Bangor office of engineering firm Woodard & Curran Inc. for the project.
Earlier this year, John Fitzpatrick, the lab’s senior director of facilities services, told the Bar Harbor Planning Board that child care is an essential part of the lab’s recruitment and retention strategy.
“This center is a major investment,” said Catherine Longley, the lab’s COO and executive vice president. “You can look at it in many ways, but I view this project as an investment into our people today and an investment in our future.”
The projected cost of the facility is approximately $5 million.
The architect is TAC Architectural Group in Bangor. JAX will be using Maine-based firms for the project.
The center, which will accommodate more than 50 children when fully staffed, is slated to open in 2024 and will be managed by the Down East Family YMCA.
The child care center will supplement the Beechland Road Early Learning Center in Ellsworth, which opened in 2017 and is also operated by the Down East Family YMCA, also based in Ellsworth. About 25% of children enrolled at the Beechland Road Center are children of JAX employees, who will be prioritized for enrollment at the new center in Bar Harbor. Any remaining spots will be open to the community.
Longley said the center is part of a suite of employee attraction tools that this year also included the arrival of three new buses designed to ease commutes for many JAX employees, and the Sept. 1 opening of the first phase of its Hemlock Lane workforce housing development.
The biomedical research institute is located on Route 3 on the outskirts of Bar Harbor’s downtown and adjacent to Acadia National Park.
COURTESY / JACKSON LABORATORY, ATLANTIC RESOURCE CONSULTANTS, CORDJIA CAPITAL PROJECTS GROUP
The child care center, blocked in orange, will be built in an area that is now undeveloped.
Longley said the JAX team and its architectural and engineering partners planned a facility designed for the care and safety of young children, with large indoor and outdoor playgrounds, easy access for parents from work areas and three primary classrooms: one for infants, one for toddlers and another for preschool-age children.
Todd Landry, director of the Office of Child and Family Services at the Maine Department of Health and Human Services, said he hoped the facility would serve as an inspiration for other employer-based centers.
Beth Dumont, an assistant professor at the lab and a mother of three, spoke about challenges that working parents face when it comes to child care.
“While there’s no clear solution to solving this issue at the national scale, we can make progress locally,” Dumont said. “These investments are not trivial, but they will earn significant returns.”
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