RANDOLPH — Each time Randolph resident Lindsay Kill takes and picks up her two daughters at the Orange County Parent Child Center in Tunbridge, the process takes at least two hours.

On days when she has to commute to her Montpelier office, that time doubles to more than four.

“Having a center open in Randolph would pretty much drastically change our lives,” Kill said. She and her husband have two daughters, ages 3½ and 1½.

Kill is in luck: Construction is currently underway on a new early childhood child care center on Route 66 that is scheduled to open in Randolph in early 2026. When it opens, the Woodlands Campus, as it’s known, will initially aim to serve 62 children from six weeks through five years old. The center will be managed by the Orange County Parent Child Center.

Once the renovation is fully complete, that number will rise to 88, said Erika Hoffman-Kiess, executive director of the Green Mountain Economic Development Corporation, which has taken the lead on the roughly $9 million project.

The first floor renovation costs $7 million and the nonprofit is currently fundraising for the $2 million for the lower level, which will also include an adult learning classroom, a gross motor skills playroom and a commercial kitchen. The project has a variety of funding sources including state and federal grants, community foundations and individual donations.

“This is a highly grant dependent construction project,” Hoffman-Kiess said.

Green Mountain owns the roughly 10,000 square foot, two-story building, which was previously Vermont Technical College’s Enterprise Center and the former offices of Dubois and King, an engineering firm.

It’s the first time that Green Mountain has taken on a childcare facility project of this magnitude.

“We’re an economic development entity … and when our business members come to us and say ‘well that’s all great, but I need housing and childcare for my employees,’ you start getting involved in childcare and housing developments,” Hoffman-Kiess said.

Conversations about bringing a childcare center to Randolph began around a decade ago. Randolph was working with the Vermont Council on Rural Development on an economic development plan that came to be known as Randolph Region Re-Energized, Hoffman-Kiess said.

A couple years earlier, parents whose children attended a Montessori school in Randolph that closed were thinking about how to create more childcare options, said Damian DiNicola, Green Mountain’s board chairman.

DiNocola’s youngest daughter was among the children displaced. Although he and his wife found another childcare option, other families struggled.

“There’s a small subset of folks who really get involved because they need it, but they don’t realize they need it until they really need it,” DiNicola said. “Those folks tend to age out and give up before the problem can be fixed.”

The conversation started to shift to viewing childcare as an economic development issue, DiNicola said. Businessowners talked about how they struggled to find employees

“You’ve got to frame these things as economic development and key infrastructure issues the same way you do as highways and roads,” DiNicola said. “There are things you need to have in place in your town and your communities if you want them to be successful and thriving.”

There’s been some progress.

Kill chairs the board of directors of the Lil’ Sunshine Childcare Center, which opened in Randolph last year and serves children up to three years old. The center benefited from Act 76, which the Vermont Legislature passed in 2023, Kill said. Act 76 expanded the Child Care Financial Assistance Program and led to more families being able to qualify for financial aid.

When Kill’s oldest daughter, now 3½ aged out of Lil’ Sunshine, “it became too difficult to navigate two totally different drop off times and schedules.”

Both children now attend the center in Tunbridge.

Act 76 also increased pay rates and professional development opportunities for early childhood educators. To help fund the legislation, the state instituted an additional payroll tax.

“It’s one of those cases where the marketplace hasn’t filled this need so it’s appropriate for the state to say ‘hey things are not working. What do we need to to do to set up the parameters so we have a reliable system?’,” said State Rep. Larry Satcowitz, D-Orange-Washington-Addison, who voted in favor of Act 76. He also serves as vice chair of the Randolph Selectboard and has been hearing from constituents for years about challenges finding childcare. “Like every place else, if your employees can’t find childcare, it limits the hours they can work.”

While there is excitement surrounding the Woodlands Campus, there are also some concerns about staffing. The center will need to hire 16 teachers and two administrative staff to run the center, Orange County Parent Child Center Executive Director Lindsey Trombley said.

“We are hoping to form relationships with graduating students of (Community College of Vermont),” Trombley wrote in an email. “Recruitment will be a challenge We hope to grow the workforce while not taking teachers away from other programs.”

Community College of Vermont President Joyce Judy said she is looking forward to placing early childhood education students as interns at the Woodlands Campus.

In the last academic year, a record number of students were enrolled in CCV’s early childhood education certificate and degree programs, including people who already work in the field and are looking to further their education.

“One of the best things we can do to help students is help them find a placement if they’re interested in going into early childhood education so that while they’re taking course they can also begin to have experience in that field,” Judy said. “A new entity is very exciting because you can start at the ground floor and work with them as they expand.”

Parents have been talking excitedly about the Woodlands campus, Kill said.

“It’s going to make a huge difference in a lot of people’s workdays and lives,” she said.

Liz Sauchelli can be reached at esauchelli@vnews.com or 603-727-3221.