As the Lower Mainland densifies, child care spaces are moving into new and unexpected locations.
Orion Construction director of sales and marketing Cameron Archer said developers can help alleviate a growing need for child care spaces by incorporating them into industrial projects.
“Traditionally, industrial business parks have only been built to do logistics, distribution or storage. People now have a higher demand for work-life balance, and the ability of employers to retain solid talent is at the forefront of thought,” Archer said.
Ha added over the last five years the idea of child care in industrial parks has spread and in the last two to three years as the province of British Columbia has found it increasingly difficult to create enough spaces, “it’s become much more front of mind.”
Archer said Orion Construction currently has two projects in the Campbell Heights area in Langley, B.C. where child care facilities are included in the design process.
One of the facilities is relocating, necessitating a longer commute for employees.
“A relocation is something they’ve used to leverage the benefits to their staff, saying, ‘You understand we’re moving from location A to location B and it is potentially a longer drive, but also consider you can just drop your child off before coming into your shift and pick them up on your way out,” he said. “The value of that is immense (in terms of) supporting their staff.”
Safety is a paramount concern in any workplace and particularly in child care spaces, and Archer said this factor is addressed in several ways in industrial settings.
“We’re typically seeing them being added as a third storey of an industrial building, so you’ll have ground floor logistics, shipping or storage bays, mezzanine space that’s typically included, and adding a third storey allows us to use rooftop space to activate outdoor requirements for day care facilities,” he said.
“The other safety aspect we have to consider when designing these buildings with third storey amenity space is that parking drop-off and pick up is probably the biggest safety factor.”
Additional considerations include ventilation, building materials “and these things are all critically important because you’re tying something in with the future health of children where these things haven’t typically meshed in the past,” he said.
“It takes a fine balancing act, understanding where you’re placing a day care in consideration of loading bays where trucks are idling. These things are taken into consideration in terms of furthest distance, access and egress…it’s all very well considered in the design.”
He added most municipalities in the Lower Mainland understand the need for adaptability going forward.
“Density is an issue. We’re in Vancouver and we don’t have anymore land, but what we do have is at an absolute premium. Municipalities really are grasping that and adding density and making new buildings going in feasible for long-term growth,” he said.
“They’re really being conscious of how their redesigning their official community plans to make these spaces more hubs as opposed to just business parks. They want them to be more community-oriented, to have more energy to them so people are more drawn to them.”
Archer added while the pandemic saw a shift from office to home for workers, industrial workers always had to come to a warehouse or other locations in order to do their jobs.
“Your shipping and logistics need to be in-house, but the majority do have an office component and those people could be working from home, but giving them those amenities, whether delivered by a developer or added on by a business taking over the space, we’re seeing more and more of this being added in,” he said.
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