The End of the Story

Since I have gotten several questions about whether the co-op is still being pursued, let me post a summary of the story here:

The end of the co-op came when we fully understood the implications of the zoning permit process. Below are the details (copied from my communication with some Durhamites who were putting together a panel discussion on barriers to high quality childcare in Durham - hopefully laying the groundwork for future changes) . . .

I had several conversations with the zoning people and this is what I learned:

1) Having a childcare in a residential or mixed use area requires a minor special use permit. It costs $4500 to apply for this permit (not including what you have to pay a licensed professional to develop a site plan). This fee is not the permit itself, but rather for the chance to apply for one. So the permit can be denied based on the discretion of the committee and you would have to start over and pay another fee to try again. Because the plan has to be specific to one location, we were faced with the prospect of either purchasing a property and then doing the application, with the possibility that we might not be approved, or investing in an application on a place that we did not yet own, and that could be sold in the meantime. Childcare centers are allowed in commercial zoned areas without extra zoning permits, but we were not interested in having a daycare in a non-residential setting.

2) We thought we could avoid this problem when a friend suggested that we could rent her house (which she just moved out of), which is in a DDO. Our impression was that this would not require a special use permit. However, when I talked with the zoning people, they said that the only difference in the DDO is that we wouldn't have to provide extra parking. It would still require the same permitting.

My conclusion from this experience is that the zoning requirements are likely part of the reason that there is not more high-quality care available in Durham. I know that the director of an amazing local childcare center is looking for a site to open a second school, and the zoning requirements are a challenge for her as well.

In the end, we've decided to use a nanny-share arrangement for our son, and my impression is that this is the solution many families in the area have settled on given the lack of sufficient high quality center-based care.


In retrospect, this experience, although technically a failure, was a great one for our family. It established relationships with several interesting families in the area (one of which lead to our current nanny-share arrangement, another of which lead to our discovery of the Cleveland-Holloway neighborhood, where we now own a house). I'm happy to continue the discussion about this and related issues with anyone who is interested. Any comments left here will arrive in my email and I can respond directly.

On reflection with our nanny-share solution: this has been a great arrangement for us, and has fulfilled much of what we hoped for in center-based childcare. It is highly dependent on the awesomeness of our nanny, and I don't know how many nannies are available of her quality. It is also dependent on finding another family at the right time with complementary needs and values, which fortunately happened for us. I still think that there is a lot of value to having really high quality childcare centers in residential settings, but I have realized that there is more potential to have great care in in-home settings than I previously thought. Hopefully Durham will eventually make it more possible to start new centers, but for now in-home options seem to be the way to go.