Building a day care center in leased space is a very economic option for placing a center in an area of rapid development. Many franchised day care companies will not allow this option to be considered, but a day care center in leased space can often be built in half the time and for less than half the budget. This should be your option of choice if you are not interested in an investment in real estate.

Here are some elements of this type of project to be aware of:

Cost: Total project cost for a large center in leased space will typically range from $350,000.00 to over $500,000.00 depending upon location, what the space was before you begin your rebuild, and how elaborate a center you want.

Time: These projects can be completed in as little as three months if the space was empty, or they can take up to a year if there are difficulties with the demolition and rebuild, or with zoning.

Location: The single greatest factor in your child care investment is location. Parents typically do not leave their children very far from their home. While some companies have had success with offering day care at parent's work sites, this is still a specialty product and is not the norm for the industry. My Doctorate degree dealt very heavily the study of demography and I personally conduct the demographic analysis used to place each school. Using leased space is an excellent option when you want to place your new school on the growth curve, but don't want to pay high dollars for prime real estate.

Design: I design the lease hold improvement for my centers on a case by case basis relying on my clients for critical input. Lease hold improvement can be the largest part of the budget for this type of center. It is not uncommon to see lease hold alone range from $100,000 to over $400,000. Because a leased space school will carry less overhead than a free standing school, the center can be designed to a lower enrollment and still sustain an acceptable profit margin. I generally design leased schools for between 140 to 180 children.

Furnishing & Equipping: Furnishing and equipping a large child care center is a major project. There are only a few large scale provides for this type of furniture and there are frequent delays associated with receiving all of the material. Decisions to be made include: quality and expense of material, color coding versus not color coding, quantities of items per room, stations versus open room, etc. Furnishing & equipping your school should cost between $50,000.00 to just over $100,000.00.

Staffing: Large day care centers are also large scale employers. It is not uncommon for a large center to have 20 to 30 employees or more. Some investors utilize mostly full time employees and provide incentives for long tenure. Others focus on a work force of mostly part-time employees. Efficient designs exist for both staffing patterns.

Security: Security in the day care industry is becoming a hot topic. I can guide you in creating several different security features for your center.