Lehman College’s New Children’s Center Coming Along

web lehman building — A view from above of the new child care center being constructed, module-by-module, at Lehman College. (Photo by Diana Perez)

A new child care center has been spoken about in theory for nearly 19 years at Lehman College in Bedford Park. Well, it’s finally coming to fruition. Lehman is in the process of constructing its new two-story child care center on the northwest area of the Lehman College campus piece by piece, literally — it’s being constructed by cobbling together ready-made modules and is expected to be complete by January 2013.

The vice president of student affairs, Jose Magdaleno, said, “We have long needed a larger facility to meet the child care needs of our students.”

Lehman’s current child care center has only three classrooms within a building that is shared with a nursing facility. The new center is in a building of its own and double in size compared to the present center. The new center is 12,000 square feet, contains six classrooms, a playroom, and a natural playground containing garden space. This center can accommodate 140 children and costs an estimated $6.3 million.

Garrison Architects has designed the building with an abstract modern feel. It starts off with an atrium lobby giving it an outdoors look but covered with glass. This allows the sunlight shining in to warm up the air inside and ventilate throughout the lobby. There will be vertical gardens on each side of the building that will be visible from inside the classrooms. The materials for the center have been chosen from recycled contents.

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