A West Footscray childcare centre is seeking urgent support to survive in the face of a 12-month redevelopment blow-out predicted to create a $1 million revenue shortfall.
Parents at Church Street Children’s Centre descended on last week’s Maribyrnong council meeting to detail impacts of the botched redevelopment of the council’s building.
The committee of management has also written to Maribyrnong councillors outlining the severity of the impact on the centre’s viability, noting it has already had to cut staff and increase fees to help stem spiralling losses.
The council had initially told parents their children would remain in place while the centre was redeveloped to increase capacity from 40 to 76 places, a project due to be finished by January.
In June, families were forced to relocate to the Maribyrnong Community Centre for six months after an 11th hour discovery that there would be no suitable toilets for children at the Church Street centre.
“A range of structural issues” has now pushed the project deadline out a further 12 months until 2018.
Many families have already abandoned the service and the uptake of places in 2017 is well below projected numbers as families balk at another 12 months of travelling to and from Maribyrnong.
Parent Natalie Lumsden asked at last week’s council meeting whether council was happy with the progress of the rebuild and what they would do differently if they had their time over.
Council community services director Clem Gillings said nobody in council was happy with where the project was headed.
“Unfortunately, we received some time ago some very poor advice from architects and structural engineers and now we collectively have to fix this problem, making sure we end up with a very good outcome regardless.”
Council chief executive Stephen Wall said the council had received “bad advice” and has since “formed a blacklist of contractors” and begun seeking damages.
Committee member Annie Wormald told the council meeting that this was the first the committee had heard of the council seeking compensation from contractors.
She indicated parents have been concerned about the lack of useful information and communication throughout the course of the project.
Mayor Catherine Cumming said the “bad situation” could provide an opportunity to redevelop the entire site from scratch.
“Maybe we have to actually rethink the whole decision, we could also decide to make it a brand new centre,” she said.
“Why should we throw good money after bad when we could look at maximising what we have here?”
•The reporter uses the Church Street Children’s Centre childcare service.
