Mar 11Building Community from the Ground Up
Last fall, Mercy Housing Mountain Plains (MHMP) announced an exciting new community in Denver’s East Colfax neighborhood.
The development comes at a time when Denver is experiencing rapid growth, leaving many families struggling to thrive in the city they call home. This historic area of East Colfax has been particularly underserved, and supporting the community with access to high-quality affordable housing and childcare is vitally important. Offering these opportunities helps create a stable foundation to build success and equity within the neighborhood.
Mercy Housing is proud to collaborate with the City of Denver on the mixed-use development that will include 83 affordable family apartments and 5,400 square feet for a quality childcare and Early Childhood Education (ECE) center. Mercy Housing will oversee the development and construction of the building, including the ECE space. Currently, we are in negotiations with childcare organizations that could provide these essential services.
Residents and community stakeholders have expressed the importance of providing a quality childcare center, and Mercy Housing listened.
For every one opening at a childcare center, there are three children under the age of five needing a place to go while their parents work. When complete, the ECE center will serve roughly 50 children (infants to pre-school age) and be subsidized for families who live up to 165% of the Federal Poverty Level.
Kuhl Brown, Director of Real Estate Development for Mercy Housing, is leading the charge to reach the funding goals and bring the childcare space to fruition.
“MHMP’s goal of providing a high-quality subsidized educational option for parents and their children in the East Colfax neighborhood and the larger community is imperative. This new early learning center is being designed and built to serve low-income families and parents, with a high preference for the onsite future qualifying residents and those from the surrounding community,” said Kuhl.
So how does Mercy Housing fund a childcare space into a development of this size? They embark on an exciting capital campaign to cover the hard costs of building the childcare space.
The East Colfax Capital Campaign is a “call to partner” with Mercy Housing on this endeavor. The goal of the campaign is to raise enough money over the course of 2020 to fully fund the construction of the ECE space.
As the development project and the capital campaign continues to build momentum, the hope is to raise the needed funds and spread awareness about the important mission this project represents.
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