With reporting by Hannah Saunders

Long-time Capitol Hill daycare center Mother’s Place faced closure near the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic but was able to get back on its feet. Flash forward two years later, when Mother’s Place announced that it would officially be closing on July 29, after 41 years of serving the Capitol Hill community — this time, for good.

Its closure will mark the end of four years of hopes to move the center as property owner Seattle Academy’s plans to expand onto the parcel first took shape accelerate.

It will also mark yet another challenge for Capitol Hill and Central Seattle families as childcare options shift in the city’s core.

Amy Magnano is a parent of two children who have attended Mother’s Place over the past five-and-a-half years and says there had been hope Haggard Childcare Resources would find a new home nearby for the facility after taking it over from Seattle Academy in 2020.

Parents got together and created a steering committee but Haggard faced too many restrictions and a lack of properties appropriate for a viable new home for the center. Magnano said even switching to an outdoor model using public parks was considered.

Magnano says the parents of Mother’s Place feel let down by the city and state leaders they also reached out to.

“[U]ltimately there was no one willing to make this a project they were willing to pursue,” Magnano said. “It’s a really sad deal.”

Seattle Academy, meanwhile, is moving ahead with plans to redevelop the property with an expansion planned as a new “Home of the Upper School (HoUS)” that will further reshape 12th and Madison’s southeast corner. Early permitting with the city shows plans for a five-story academic building above a one-level underground parking lot. The planned development will also have an outdoor plaza that will serve as a connector to the school’s other buildings on the block.

The academy acquired the Mother’s Place property and 1930-built daycare building in 2011 for $3 million and operated the child care facility until handing over the business to Haggard two years gao.

The families remaining at Mother’s Place are now saying goodbye to the little building — and the people who have taken care of their children. Much of the sadness Magnano feels comes from the uncertainty of what will happen to the staff and teachers.

Haggard, meanwhile, continues to operate six facilities mostly around the University of Washington area of the city. Started as the first full-day Montessori program in Seattle, “starting with just seven children,” now serves families of more than 500 kids.

Mother’s Place families say Haggard has kept them posted on openings at the other locations but location matters when it comes to daycare. Around 100 kids from Mother’s Place are now in need of new providers.

And choices around Capitol Hill are slim. One big hope had been a new center coming to the development above Capitol Hill Station. But the delays around the pandemic and changes in the tenant mix in the new buildings has shifted those plans. The space earmarked by community preferences as a childcare facility will instead house Summit Community Center, a center offering programming and resources for neurodiverse individuals aged 18 to 29, when it opens later this year. There are larger options. The Bright Horizon chain opened its giant 172-student capacity center on the backside of Pike/Pine in 2015. The pricier International Montessori Academy has also invested in the neighborhood, opening a facility on E Olive Way in an overhauled restaurant complex in 2018 and later adding a second with its acquisition of the Gaffney House across from Trader Joe’s in 2019.

But for the Mother’s Place families, there isn’t really another place like it.

“There really isn’t anything comparable to Mother’s Place in terms of their location,” said Magnano. “It’s truly like a wonderful place for children and for professional parents who just aren’t going to have the same options once it closes.”

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