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January 14, 2022BY BILL DOYLE
CFP CORRESPONDENT
WORCESTER - Candlepins and bowling lanes will be replaced by 170 children when the Guild of St. Agnes opens a childcare center in the former Colonial Bowling Center at 248 Mill St. in August.
The guild purchased the former candlepin bowling center for $1 million, according to St. Agnes executive director Edward P. Madaus. The transaction closed on Dec. 1.
St. Agnes runs several childcare centers in Worcester and others in Charlton, Devens, Fitchburg, Gardner and Webster. The Mill Street center would be a little smaller than the agency’s center on Granite Street, but about the same size as its center on Grove Street.
“It’s a good location,” Mr. Madaus said. “It’s between Webster Square and Tatnuck Square. We don’t have anything over there. There’s not a lot of childcare over that side of the city and it’s a free-standing building, it’s just wide open. It’s 17,000 square feet so we thought it would be a good deal.”
Nicholas Andreson opened the Colonial Bowling Center beside Coes Pond in 1960 and closed it in 2020 due to the pandemic. It was the last candlepin bowling center in Worcester, where the game was invented in 1881. Mr. Andreson died Jan. 8 at 92.
Mr. Madaus said St. Agnes plans to spend about $5 million to build seven preschool rooms for children 2.9 to 5 years old, two rooms for toddlers and one for infants. Alan McDonnell of Worcester has been hired to do the construction, Mr. Madaus said.
St. Agnes ran a childcare center at 284 Highland St. for four years after taking it over from another agency. Mr. Madaus said the building wasn’t very conducive for childcare so it was remodeled into three condos and sold in November for $850,000. The children were moved to Salem Covenant Church on East Mountain Street.
Mr. Madaus hopes to open the center in August before the school year begins in September. He believes St. Agnes will be able to fill the Mill Street location, considering that waitlists are common at childcare centers. The biggest challenge industry-wide is hiring enough staff after some workers left during the height of the pandemic, he said.
“We’re starting to see a little bit more applications,” he said, “and hopefully once this Omicron thing passes I think we’ll probably be OK.”
St. Agnes didn’t close any of its childcare centers due to the pandemic, but reduced the number of students in each classroom from 20 to 10.
“But we still had two teachers,” Mr. Madaus said, “because we wanted to separate the kids as much as possible. So now we hope to get back to that 20-1 ratio, but every time it looks like this (pandemic) thing is over, it rears its ugly head again.”
St. Agnes had taken care of as many as 1,700 children at its childcare centers, but that number dropped to 1,200 during the height of the pandemic. It has since rebounded to 1,500 and Mr. Madaus expects to get back to 1,700 by April or May, if more staff can be hired.
St. Agnes could start accepting reservations for children as soon as June.
“We’ve helped countless families,” Mr. Madaus said. “One of the things that I’m most proud of is that we have 700 kids out of our population who are connected with DCF (Department of Children and Families). So, we’re true to our mission.”
The Guild of St. Agnes is a private, licensed, non-profit childcare agency that was founded in 1913. According to its website, the guild’s mission is “to provide families with quality, affordable early childhood education and school age programs in a safe, nurturing environment for children aged four weeks to 12 years.”
