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Denver airport officials plan to open a small drop-in child care center in 2026 and are studying the possibility of opening another child care center that would serve more employees in the future.
The drop-in center will have room for 20 children and be located on the fourth level of the airport’s hotel and transit center, within a new training facility called the Center of Equity and Excellence in Aviation. The child care center is meant to provide occasional care and will primarily serve the children of airport employees or community members who are participating in training center activities.
While the planned center would serve only a tiny fraction of the airport’s more than 40,000 employees, it represents a first step toward boosting the number of child care seats in an area with limited supply. Officials at the airport, which is the nation’s third busiest, began studying the possibility of a child care center at or near the airport’s far northeast Denver campus earlier this year.
That area of the city has so few state-licensed child care slots, it’s considered a child care desert.
The Denver airport will soon join a few other U.S. airports with on- or near-site child care facilities. They include Los Angeles International Airport, which operates a center for the children of employees a few blocks from the airport campus, and Pittsburgh International Airport, which runs a center in a converted terminal. Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport is slated to open a center on its campus this year. The three centers are bigger than what’s planned at Denver’s airport.
Denver’s drop-in center will have two classrooms — one for babies and toddlers and one for preschoolers — and a separate play area. It will be open 10 to 12 hours a day Monday through Friday year-round, including on holidays, according to the airport’s recent request for proposals, which seeks an operator to run the child care center.
Parents participating in activities at the airport training center will pay nothing for care. Some airport employees not participating in training activities also will be allowed to use the child care center for back-up care, but will have to pay a fee.
Ashley Forest, an airport spokesperson, said by email that she couldn’t provide information on which employees will be eligible for back-up care at the center or whether they will pay a discounted fee. She also couldn’t provide details on whether families will be limited to a certain number of weekly or monthly hours of care at the center.
Forest said plans for the drop-in center came out of the second phase of the airport’s three-phase child care feasibility study. The third phase will look at the possibility of “an airportwide child care solution,” which could be a second child care center on or near the airport campus.
Earlier this spring, airport officials estimated that 19,000 of more than 40,000 airport employees fall into the 20- to 39-year-old age range, but said they still needed more information about how many of those employees have young children and need child care.
The airport is working with a business-oriented group, Executives Partnering to Invest in Children, on the child care feasibility study. Forest said she expects a recommendation to come out of phase three later this year.
Ann Schimke is a senior reporter at Chalkbeat, covering early childhood issues and early literacy. Contact Ann at aschimke@chalkbeat.org
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