Following years of discussion on the desire for a daycare center in the City of Stuart, the Stuart Enterprise for Economic Development (SEED) is working on opening a facility downtown.

Stuart Economic Development Director Kristen Renslow says they purchased the former Farmers Fire Mutual Insurance building located at 116 North Division Street with plans to renovate and lease to a childcare operator. Renslow says there has been discussion for the past decade of getting a child care center opened in town, and recently SEED had a childcare feasibility study done by First Children’s Finance for their original intention of building a new facility, “The childcare operator kind of reached out to SEED to see if there was anything that we could do to help with the facilitation of that. So after discussions with the operator we decided you know there was a building downtown available and that operator was actually already looking at that building and we just decided to partner together to get a childcare center going in town to support the needs of the community.”

Renslow says the proposed center would house 30 children from infant to five years old. She says the project still has a long way to go, as they next will work on renovating the building to the Department of Human Services and State Fire Marshal’s requirements, and developing a lease agreement with the childcare provider.