Iowa City board approves Reach for Your Potential expansion at 1839 and 1849 B Street

The Iowa City Board of Adjustment at its March meeting approved a special exception allowing Reach for Your Potential to expand a daycare operation at 1839 and 1849 B Street and to serve up to 140 children, subject to several staff-recommended conditions including improvement of the alley between the property and Fifth Avenue.

City planning staff told the board the applicant proposes to combine the previously authorized daycare at 1839 B Street with an adjacent, newly purchased single-family house at 1849 B Street to provide additional indoor space and reorganized classrooms. "The day care intends to accommodate up to 140 children," Parker Walsh, associate planner, said during the staff report. Walsh said the property contains about 6,800 square feet of interior floor area usable for daycare purposes (a theoretical capacity of up to 196 children under the code's 35 square feet-per-child interior requirement), and that the applicant plans a roughly 3,600-square-foot addition and a new outdoor play area of about 4,100 square feet.

Nut graf: The expansion responds in part to the announced closure of another East Side facility and a recent state grant that allowed Reach for Your Potential to accept children and staff from the closing program. Supporters said the expansion will preserve child-care slots and jobs; neighbors and some board members raised concerns about traffic, alley use, and scale.

Staff said parking and queuing constraints set the practical limit for enrollment. The site plan shows 34 parking spaces (20 proposed south of the alley and 14 existing nonconforming spaces adjacent to the building) and seven on-site stacking spaces for drop-off and pick-up. Walsh explained the city's stacking-space requirement limits the daycare to 140 children because "every 20 children is 1 stacking space, which is why their limit is set to 140, because they can only fit 7 stacking and loading spaces on the property." The staff report advised that new parking areas south of the alley must comply with standards, that pedestrian routes be separated from parking by a raised curb or barrier, and that a demarcated pedestrian crossing be provided over the alley.

Applicant Stacy Humiston, Executive Director of Reach for Your Potential, told the board the expansion is needed to absorb children and staff from the closing Loving Arms Early Learning Center and to provide extended hours. "We will open at 06:30 a.m. ... and we will close at 08:30 p.m.," Humiston said when asked about hours. She also said Reach for Your Potential plans to accept both its own staff's children and community children and expects roughly a 50/50 mix of staff children and external enrollments in the near term.

Ashley Cooney, identified as parent board president for Loving Arms, said the partnership will preserve slots and jobs. "Without this new partnership, 75 children and nearly 50 staff members ... will effectively be without child care and employment," Cooney said.

Neighbors asked questions about traffic flow in the alley, winter maintenance, utilities and the scale of the operation. Jim Niebuhr, a long-time resident on Fifth Avenue, said he supported child care generally but worried the proposed capacity was too large for the immediate neighborhood. "I can live with 40 kids," he said, adding that the larger proposed capacity raised concerns about congestion and emergency access. Tom Yates, a neighbor, said he supported the project and saw the reuse of an underused building as positive.

Staff and the applicant described proposed conditions intended to mitigate neighborhood impacts. Conditions included: improvement of the alley to city standards from the west property line to Fifth Avenue prior to issuance of a certificate of occupancy; construction of a pedestrian path with a demarcated crossing over the alley; enclosing the outdoor play area with a minimum four-foot opaque fence and S2 screening along the east and west property lines; screening new parking with an S5 (6–8 foot) fence plus additional S2 planting around the fence perimeter; one-way pavement markings and "Do Not Enter" signage to maintain traffic flow; compliance of outdoor lighting with single-family standards; and turning outdoor lighting off one hour after business closure.

After board discussion and public comment, a motion to approve the special exception with the staff-recommended conditions and a 12-month expiration for site-plan and building-permit approvals was moved, seconded and carried unanimously in roll call vote: Baker, Carlson, Russo, Swigert and Tallman voted yes. The board chair read the standard appeal information noting that any person desiring to appeal must file within 30 days after the decision is filed with the city clerk's office.

The approval allows Reach for Your Potential to proceed toward detailed site-plan approval, building permits and the listed site improvements; several of the conditions require review and sign-off by city engineering or public-works staff before occupancy.