MONTEVIDEO — As groundbreaking ceremonies go, this one was complicated.
Twenty-nine children had first digs at tossing the dirt as CCM Health hosted a groundbreaking ceremony Wednesday for a $2.4 million child care center on its Montevideo campus.
“This is what it’s really about, all these kids,” said Brian Lovdahl, CEO of CCM Health, as the 29 children — most of them preschool age — were led by staff from the existing child care center to the site of the groundbreaking.
As a point of fact, the rules and regulations involved with child care are complicated too, but worth the navigating, according to Lovdahl. Having child care available is a definite help for the health system’s staff. The nearly 350 employees skew younger than is the average for health care facilities in the country, meaning there are many with young children, he explained.
The availability of on-campus child care benefits both staff recruitment and retention, according to the CEO. A new provider had no more than inked his contract when the first thing he mentioned was the desire to enroll a child in the center, Lovdahl said.
CCM Health became one of the first small health care systems in the country to offer child care services when it opened its existing center in January 2020. It continues to receive inquiries from other systems about how to make it happen, according to Lovdahl.
The move into the new facility should happen in October, if not sooner. Groundwork is completed and the footprint for the new facility is readied, all ahead of schedule, according to the CEO.
The new, 5,000-square-foot center will offer more than three times the space of the existing facility. The new facility will be licensed for 70 children. The current facility is licensed for 31 children but serves around 40 when counting drop-ins. It is located in a building housing the ambulance operations.
The new facility will be located on the site where the original Montevideo Veterans Affairs Clinic stood. The location puts the young children no more than 60 feet away from the nearest doctor in CCM Health’s Medical Clinic and Hospital if they should need medical help. It also means nursing mothers can drop over to the center during breaks.
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Staffing needs led to the decision more than six years ago to open an on-campus child center. Lovdahl said CCM Health was being served by traveling nurses in 2018-19 to meet staffing needs. Permanent staff members expressed an interest in working more hours, he said, but they cited the lack of child care as a major impediment to doing so.
It took about eight months from the beginning of the discussions on child care needs to the opening of existing center. In about six months, it reached capacity, and has pretty much stayed at that level ever since, according to Lovdahl.
Operating a child care center can be challenging, but Lovdahl pointed out that the value goes well beyond the health care center.
The new spaces for the children of CCM Health’s employees should free up spaces in other child care operations in Montevideo, he said. As in most communities, there is a gap between the number of available and needed child care spots.
Montevideo had a shortage of 145 child care spaces according to a June 2024 analysis by the nonprofit First Children's Finance and funded by the Minnesota Department of Children, Youth and Families.
The new facility will feature a prairie-style architecture with large windows in its corners. It will be divided inside according to ages. It will hold a commercial kitchen and feature a modern security system. An outdoor patio area will be available.
CCM Health had studied the possibility of re-purposing the former Montevideo VA Clinic, which opened in 2002. It was found to be cost-prohibitive to renovate the three-section modular building that had served as the clinic, and it was razed.
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Lovdahl used the groundbreaking as an opportunity to thank the CCM Health board of directors, Montevideo City Council and the Chippewa County Board of Commissioners for their support of the child care project. The city of Montevideo and Chippewa County jointly own CCM Health.
The existing child care area within the ambulance building will be returned to its former use as a training and conference center.
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