The finest child care facility in the world will soon be under construction at Hacienda Business Park.  Land, construction and start-up costs of the child care facility at Hacienda Business Park are expected to be around $2.5 million. Never before have developers initiated a child care program of this magnitude.

“This business park will bring thousands of jobs into the community over the next 20 years,” said Joe Callahan, of Hacienda Business Park. "We’ve made a firm commitment to provide employers and employees at Hacienda Business Park with a number of support programs, including transportation and child care. The child care program we've devised is based on the utmost quality and yet will be offered at a price that's affordable for working parents. We realize that two-paycheck families are here to stay, and that for an employer to maintain a stable and quality employee base, he had better offer some child care arrangements.”

The child care center at Hacienda Business Park is the culmination of ideas from successful child care programs from around the world, incorporating the best design and operational aspects from Scandinavia, Great Britain, the Netherlands, Japan and the U.S. In a model planning process that began in December 1983, input was sought from international child care experts, facility directors, community representatives and landscape and structural architects. Quality was the constant theme.

"I've never dealt with a group so devoted to offering the absolute best,” said Ken Jaffe, executive director of the International Child Resource Institute in Berkeley, and a member of the development task force for the Park's child care center. ''For me, it was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. The developers literally said, ‘Here, plan the best child care center and the new world standard’." The 17,000-square-foot facility will be built on a 1.88-acre site on Chabot Drive, near the business park's main entrance at Hopyard Road and Stoneridge Drive. The center will accommodate 200 children, ranging from infancy through five years of age.

Comprised of live modules that meet in a spacious half-acre courtyard, each module of the child care facility is divided and planned to house no more than 25 children. Quality instruction and attention will be ensured by low instructor-to-child ratios (8 to 1 for preschoolers; 4 to 1 for toddlers and infants), and among the industry's highest salaries to attract -and keep -the best and brightest of child care professionals. Other unique aspects of Hacienda Business Park's Child Care Center include: designed from the ground up with kids in mind; radiant heat eminating from the floor, rather than germ-prone forced air heating; a separate staff area with lounge, patio, showers and changing area — almost unheard of in child care centers in the U.S.

With the innovations and borrowed international design highlights, the planned child care center will be a showcase, likely to be used as a study model by child care professionals worldwide. Indeed, two observation rooms with one-way glass will be built to accommodate such study.

Getting quality child care — at an affordable price — will be the burning dilemma confronting working couples through the remainder of this century. With 26.2 million two-job families in America today, both spouses holding full-time jobs has become the rule rather than the exception.

Of couples with preschool-age children, only about half (6.2 million) have a spouse stay home to watch over them. The other half, plus the nearly two million employed single women with preschool-age children, are in the work force.

Aware of the increasing need for workers to find convenient, reliable, quality child care, Hacienda Business Park decided to construct an appropriate on-site child care facility that would be consistent with the quality of the rest of the business park. "They (the developers) are very enlightened about the role of child care in main-taining a more carefree, more productive workplace for the parents,” Jaffe said.

While the quality of the child care at Hacienda Business Park's center will be the highest in the country, parental fees will be moderate.

Construction of the facility could begin as early as April and be open by the beginning of next year. Resources for Family Development, based in the Livermore-Pleasanton area and with an office in Chabot Center, presently make child care referrals for interested persons in the community.

The office in Chabot Center is open on Tuesdays from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. and. Thursdays from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m.

Further information pertaining to child care referrals may be obtained by calling 463-0892.

To see a reproduction of the original article and edition of Pleasanton Pathways, visit: Februrary 11, 1985 Pathways.