[0:00] My name is Larry Oates, I'm the President of the West Lafayette Read Development Commission. I want to take just a moment and welcome you all to participate. And thank you for participating in this public input session for the early childhood education center. A couple things I want to do tonight before we get started. Number one is let you know that there are restroom facilities just on the hall outside. Please feel free at a point to use those, obviously. And there's also drinking fountain down there.

[0:28] And there's also a bottle fill if you need to use that also this evening.

[0:32] We're going to try to do a fairly short formal presentation of front.

[0:37] And then after the formal presentation, we'll open up the floor to some questions.

[0:41] And then we'll have more one-on-one session involving our architects and other experts around

[0:47] at the various poster boards in the like around the room to be able to get all the information

[0:52] together.

[0:52] What is really critical is, for us to understand what your opinions are on what's going on here and whether we're on the right path.

[1:03] There's no final decisions that have been made here. We're trying to work through a situation where we see whether we can figure out how to provide early child education in an affordable way and make that high quality early child education.

[1:16] within the city of West Lafayette, to fill the gap that we've through our previous studies

[1:21] have found exists in this town. And so we need your help to be able to understand exactly

[1:28] what goes on with that. This evening, I have the honor and pleasure of having a number of experts

[1:34] with me here this evening. First off, the mayor of West Lafayette, Mayor Erin Easter, sitting next

[1:40] to her is one of our architects.

[1:42] This is Chris the Simon's Glyva, Daniel.

[1:48] She's with Ross Barney, out of Chicago.

[1:50] I also have another architect, and he's

[1:53] kind of lead architect on the project, and that's Kevin Cooper,

[1:56] and he's with Studio Access out of Indianapolis.

[1:59] In addition, I want to recognize

[2:00] that we have one of our city counselors in the room,

[2:03] and that's Kathy Parker, Kathy, if you'll wave.

[2:07] And she's one of our city counselors

[2:08] for District 5 in my correct on it all right and with that I think a couple over arching

[2:17] comments then as we begin. Number one is that part of what we want to do tonight is make sure

[2:24] that you understand how all this has come about. This has not been a process where we've

[2:30] not indicted anything. We've gone to the public right from the beginning and asked what your

[2:38] for having surveys, having comments that are available through the website, and after this

[2:43] meeting tonight, if you don't get your comments completely composed or expressed to an

[2:49] individual here in the room, please go to the website again, the WestLafiateMove's.com website,

[2:56] and we will have vehicles there for you to be able to make those comments again. Survey, all kinds

[3:03] of, you know, question and answer type things, bottom line is we want to know how you feel

[3:08] about this stuff at the end of the day.

[3:10] So please make your opinions known so that we can take those in no count as we put this

[3:15] project together.

[3:17] With that, I think now would be a good time to introduce a Mayor Erin Easter for some comments.

[3:25] Thank you, Larry.

[3:26] So I will go over kind of what why we're having a conversation about early childhood education

[3:32] at all. It is not a conversation that you often hear directly had by units of local government,

[3:39] but one that we think is pretty important as we look at the quality of life overgärching across

[3:45] West Lafayette regardless of what that context is. So we did similar studies and looks

[3:51] one for this building that we're all sitting in today. Second for our wellness center and third for

[3:57] this and this is a pretty common occurrence for us to go through this process as we consider

[4:02] any changes adjustments to or investment frankly by the city. So how did this start?

[4:10] A handful of years ago and I'm looking at the providers in the room because they will absolutely

[4:13] remember this. We started hearing quite a bit about the lack of early childhood education opportunities

[4:20] in the community. And so how we define that is past equality, three or four stars, and

[4:28] variable fees based on service and income. So we knew that we had an opportunity that we

[4:36] have done a great job in West Lafayette finding solutions to problems, whether that's our

[4:41] wellness center or other opportunities for us. And we wanted to find a way to partner with

[4:47] agencies that could help us achieve that work, not necessarily for us to do all of the work.

[4:51] We are really good at a lot of things in the city, but early childhood education is not

[4:55] what we're specialized in, and you don't want us to be either.

[5:00] We needed to know how to do all the other things that we do engineering roads and picking up trash, all those great things that magically happened.

[5:08] So, we commissioned a study through APA consulting in think we started having the conversation and late 23 commissioned the report in 24 to see what the early childhood education landscape looked like specifically in West Lafayette.

[5:22] We recognize that early childhood education is a problem that needs a solution across to be

[5:27] new county and greater off yet.

[5:29] Our real focus was West Lafayette and what we can do.

[5:33] So looking, going through that process, we had a lot of public input through that process,

[5:39] working with both of our school corporations, doing some heat maps of birth rates and death

[5:45] rates and where the city is growing, where it will continue to grow, and where we can

[5:49] the most families critical to where they are.

[5:53] So the north side of our city and just outside of our city

[5:56] is that kind of critical mass of individuals,

[6:00] particularly with a zero to five age population.

[6:04] Now as parts of the city change and progress,

[6:10] that might change, but that's where that center of gravity

[6:13] is at the moment.

[6:15] A few other things that are really important,

[6:17] think about, infant care is excruciatingly expensive for good reason, it should be, but we

[6:24] have to be able to balance that high cost with the rest of the service delivery models.

[6:29] So thinking about that from a business perspective, and we're talking why and why now, but

[6:35] also why where. It is a critical spot in terms of the center of gravity and West Lafayette with

[6:42] students with schools, with business development, with our wellness center, which I've mentioned

[6:50] more than once and also, we have a fire station out there as well.

[6:54] So there's a lot of connections, probably the most important for my development perspective

[6:59] is the three hospitals or near hospitals that are developing in this area, which is really

[7:04] driving our point of conversation on what care looks like 24 hours a day.

[7:09] Obviously we don't expect kids to interact after school the same way that they would overnight but thinking about those healthcare workers that may have shifts that's the bridge overnight and how we accommodate those members of our community.

[7:24] I think there's nobody in this room doubts that the childcare early childcare landscape is shifting across the state of Indiana as we go through a period where we don't have vouchers and now we do have vouchers and we're trying to figure out the best way.

[7:39] to respond to those changes, yeah, it's a question mark, really, and what are places in that

[7:47] and what we can do to be helpful to our community and our citizens. We are taking our

[7:53] time though, obviously this is the second of two meetings as we talk about something more

[7:57] design intensive and we'll continue to go down this path, but we are taking our time to really

[8:03] to understand the context of what we need given our site and our community and how many

[8:10] spaces we're really looking for. If I remember correctly, we've designed to about a hundred.

[8:20] And if we were to start construction, it would not be until probably 2029 or 2030, so we still

[8:26] I have a bit of a horizon here and I'm looking forward to this evening.

[8:33] It's even if there's a bit of a horizon here and put this really critical right now.

[8:38] It's a much harder to change a plan right before construction than it is to provide lots of input at this point.

[8:44] So we look forward to your feedback.

[8:46] Thank you.

[8:51] So when we were here back in July, we presented four different ideas for how the building could sit on the site.

[8:58] One was a courtyard concept, a C-shaped concept, a linear concept, and an offset concept.

[9:06] And then we pose several questions to those in person and also on the website.

[9:12] And here's some of the things that we heard.

[9:15] Yeah, so we've developed a word cloud of these are words that came up not only from our last community engagement meeting,

[9:22] but also all of our stakeholder meetings and even back to even the original RFQ that solicited our services.

[9:28] So a lot of these words came out.

[9:31] They're color-coded based on different categories,

[9:34] but they're also kind of a scale,

[9:36] like the larger the words are the more repetitive.

[9:39] We heard those comments.

[9:41] The comments were more passionate.

[9:43] The larger the words are.

[9:45] But they were all around things like the site,

[9:48] the outdoor spaces, program of the building comments,

[9:52] and also environmental comments.

[9:54] And so what you see, safety was pretty much number one.

[9:57] and it spanned the gamut.

[10:00] As far as site building program and even the environment of the site. Other things that we heard from a site standpoint

[10:09] is a separate drop-off zone. That was a, that was a very, a need and a passion that a lot of people

[10:16] have stated. And that goes back to safety as well. We want to make sure that we have really

[10:21] good separation between pedestrians and vehicular circulation. So, that drop-off is key to that. Outdoor

[10:28] spaces, again, keeping the outdoor play areas or places

[10:33] buffered by landscaping, by the building, keeping it sheltered from the main roadway in front.

[10:41] Programmed comments, gross motorroom seemed to come up quite a bit, so having a multi-purpose face outside of the classrooms for the children.

[10:50] We're really important and then from a 24-7 operations, that came up not as passionate but also came up as a need or a suggestion as well.

[11:01] In environmental and waste control, we've got the fire station to the west, SK Heinrichs to the north and then the busy road, main road of Calbear.

[11:10] So, we want to use the landscaping, the buffers that are required by the zoning ordinance to help with noise control as well.

[11:19] Natural light from an environmental standpoint, not only in the classrooms, but the gross motor, as well.

[11:26] That was a big comment, building orientation, can we orient the building so that the building itself takes advantage of natural light, but also its orientation helps with energy efficiency with the building as well.

[11:39] We can go with the next slide if we can thank you.

[11:43] And then we did a survey monkey, so this is kind of a matrix in a summary of the survey

[11:47] monkey.

[11:49] A majority, probably 97% of the comments that we received were anywhere from neutral to strongly

[11:57] agree.

[11:58] So the darker the green, the more strong the agreement was, the lighter the green goes

[12:04] to more of the maybe a disagreement or a neutrality in the comment itself.

[12:10] Some of the summaries from this, the strongly agreed elements where screen play areas from the main road.

[12:17] Again, that's part of the safety and also screen up with the building.

[12:23] Provide a gross motor room.

[12:25] Again, I mentioned that before, site design to include features to manage stormwater.

[12:29] That's going to be a very important feature, but we want to do it in a creative way so that it feels like it's just a natural environment

[12:36] not just, you know, a drainage swale or a retention pond.

[12:41] The agreements, not only were those comments as well, but agreements were connect

[12:47] play areas to landscape and natural features adjacent to the site, direct access to

[12:53] play areas from the classrooms that was a big comment, even in the word, cloud itself,

[12:59] natural light again, building orientation to reduce energy use, but also just efficient building

[13:04] practices as well for the building and also the wellness and air quality was another

[13:10] strongly agreed or agreed to point.

[13:15] You know, maybe two or three disagreements or strongly disagreed was screen parking areas from the main road.

[13:23] I think that has to do with safety so that the facility is visible to the public safety, both police and fire.

[13:32] 24-7 operations it was a neutral pretty much neutral I think it's a need in the mayor expressed

[13:38] why that is the case but it was it was it's a interesting it's probably 25% across the board

[13:45] either being neutral agree or strongly agree on the 24-7 operations so that was interesting

[13:51] direct access to play areas from classrooms that we only had one comment on a disagreement on that

[13:58] that that was one of the top probably agreeable comments or survey questions that were answered that way.

[14:07] So what's it?

[14:08] So we took all of those comments and started developing all four of those options.

[14:13] We're taking those comments into consideration.

[14:17] And we're probably about three or four more weeks on developing those ideas.

[14:21] And then we decided to evaluate the four concepts based on how they've been developed.

[14:27] looking at, you know, the layouts, parking, expansion opportunities, safety, and after updating

[14:34] all of the plans, we selected the linear option to continue to move forward.

[14:40] So, the things about the linear option, you know, it has a strong classroom playground connection,

[14:47] putting the playground in the back, we can screen it from the building, there's an opportunity

[14:52] The idea that we are showing right now that we'd like opinions on about a potential front

[14:57] playground that is screened with walls for infant.

[15:00] There are areas that can't, there are low work, there are shorter, and you can screen them pretty easily.

[15:06] Also, the linearly out is really very efficiently out for structural and building systems. Very good opportunities for daylight and solar orientation, which works well for our lead and well points.

[15:19] Again, the screen playgrounds are there. We have also modified our detention upon, so it's a dry detention basin.

[15:27] so that this concerns about water near children.

[15:30] We don't have that anymore except for a major water event.

[15:35] And then we send a lot of time separating the drop-off areas

[15:39] from the parking.

[15:40] And I'm going to show you in this plan here.

[15:44] This is how we are starting to develop it.

[15:47] So as you can see here, this is the drop-off area.

[15:52] You come in here.

[15:53] There's parking.

[15:54] There's overflow parking.

[15:56] This area is just for people dropping off. If you're coming to Park and visit and work, you can park over here.

[16:03] We have a main entrance and we have a back entrance. We have screened playground behind the building.

[16:10] We have the optional screened playground in the front with some little walls and landscaping.

[16:16] There's a great opportunity for expansion in the back here, which kind of goes into the offset option.

[16:22] We have this thing, and then a future parking here.

[16:26] We have dry detention over in here, and then we've included

[16:30] buffered landscaping on the three sides here,

[16:34] so your buffer from the street, your buffer from the property on the west,

[16:37] and the property on the north.

[16:44] And again, the floor plan layout, we have the main entrance

[16:50] right in here.

[16:51] You come in.

[16:52] There's admin areas, we'll be to the left.

[16:55] But the gross motor room to the right street access out into the play area and you know this is would be the connection for a future addition

[17:04] The corridor nice sight lines here playground access from the older kids classrooms and then again the potential playground

[17:16] Outdoor area from the infant classroom and then all of the support spaces are back here near the

[17:22] staff entry and works out very well and then we started looking at what this building could potentially look like.

[17:34] So there's a lot of potential with the different linear options, but this is one.

[17:41] One option that we are looking at which gives us the angled slope roofs where we can put the photovoltaics on.

[17:49] because there's some nice shade for some of the windows.

[17:52] There's daylight opportunities on both the north and the south side.

[17:58] You can see here we have the screened area for the potential playground

[18:04] with a canopy here as an option.

[18:08] And we're looking at a variety of different materials that will help us with the lead

[18:13] and well points looking at thermally modified wood,

[18:16] which is a wood that is lower maintenance.

[18:19] We have a fiber cement panels.

[18:22] We are looking at brick for the glazing.

[18:26] We had a lot of comments about wanting day lighting,

[18:29] but also wanting privacy for the kids.

[18:31] And there's concerns about views in.

[18:33] So looking at tinted glass and pattern glass.

[18:36] And then on the interiors, introducing color.

[18:40] Again, daylight, the millwork for the form woods

[18:44] to have inviting spaces for the kids.

[18:50] And these are just different ideas

[18:52] that we are looking at getting what I'd like to get feedback

[18:55] from everyone and what the important things for them

[18:58] are to continue in our development of these plans.

[19:04] So

[19:07] we're coming to the end of the formal presentation

[19:09] at this point and a couple of reminders on things.

[19:13] Number one, again, I want to thank you all for coming.

[19:15] Okay, you care, and that's what we want to hear, we want to hear people that care about this project as far as letting us know what we're doing right and what we're doing wrong and what changes we need to make.

[19:28] Secondly, we would love to hear your feedback this evening.

[19:33] And so we have built in a whole bunch of time to be able to get that feedback from you.

[19:37] So if in chance, you don't have the time to stay, or let's say you're like me and sometimes

[19:44] you need to go home and sleep on something before you actually put all your thoughts together

[19:48] and like the WestLothia moves to WLmoves.com website, we'll have information on there along

[19:54] with another survey that you can fill out, and places where you can give your word feedback.

[20:00] And that will be open until September 11, 2026 at 4 o'clock. So we're trying to give enough time to be able to get that information back to us, get that feedback.

[20:11] But at the same time, give us enough time after that so that we can continue moving forward and following that feedback and making changes to this project.

[20:23] We are now going to split up and put some architects around the room.

[20:29] Our architects experts that are around the room, I have made sure that they ate before

[20:33] they started this evening and that's so you don't have to worry about them biting you or

[20:37] anything.

[20:38] They are actually very nice people and they're very kind to talk to and in the life.

[20:43] What's really fun about dealing with architects if you've not done this before is that while

[20:50] The design is theirs and they're really proud of what they've done.

[20:54] They're also very, very open to comments, because sometimes you'll make a comment to them and

[20:59] they'll just kind of look at you and they're like, wow, that's something we never even thought

[21:03] about or never considered, and it's really kind of a fun interaction when you start talking

[21:09] to these folks.

[21:10] And I hope that you'll spend some time and do that.

[21:12] I know that both Krista and Kevin are going to be out at various posters around the floor.

[21:19] I'm going to be around, the mayor is going to be around here for a while.

[21:23] Please let us know what your feedback is and let us know exactly what that's going to do.

[21:28] So with that, I welcome you to please get up and mill about, take a look at all the posters.

[21:35] If you couldn't see very well sometimes, at least for me, I find that when you're on the screen,

[21:40] it's a little hard to see, especially the small detail in the light.

[21:43] Those posters are all around the room now and you can actually get up to them and actually

[21:47] see where it's at. We provided all kinds of different areas where there's posted notes and papers.

[21:54] Please write comments on them, stick them on to the poster. If you're looking at a poster

[22:00] and go, boy, I don't like the way that this wall looks like it's not plumb. And that's

[22:04] your comment. Great. Write it down, put a note on it, slap it on the poster so that we know

[22:08] what it is. We take these to heart and we want to hear from you on it. And so with that,

[22:13] Please join us and finally once again thank you. Thank you for coming this evening and letting your thoughts be known on

[22:24] this yeah

Early Childhood Education Center Public Input Session

Agenda

Transcript