180 childcare spaces opening up in former YWCA building

Childcare is returning to the former YWCA building at 1940 McIntyre Street, across from Regina’s City Hall.

BGC Saskatoon, formerly known as the Boys and Girls Clubs of Saskatoon, is taking over the building’s main and second floors, which previously held the YWCA’s office and childcare spaces.

The new space will have two Early Learning Centres with 180 childcare spots – 50 more than the YWCA offered at the site.

Alongside increased capacity, the location will also accommodate younger kids.

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“[The YWCA] only did from toddler to school age, I believe, and we would like to be able to provide infant spaces to families in Regina, because we know that infant spaces are really hard to come by,” BGC Saskatoon Director of Early Years Programming Jayme Melnyk said.

Once renovations are finished, Melnyk said there will be a total of 24 infant spaces.

Melnyk said BGC Saskatoon was in the process of leasing the second floor when the landlord reached out, saying the first floor was also available. “We took it as this sign from the universe that it was meant to be for us to expand more into Regina,” she said. (Marija Robinson/980 CJME)

But, responding to the demand for infant childcare will require some work, with renovations already underway to ensure the space meets government standards.

According to Melnyk, those renovations are turning into a bigger project than initially anticipated, but thankfully, “there’s a lot of things that are already in place that will help make this transition a lot easier.”

Tentative timeline for opening

Some of those things in place include the yard and two childcare centres that the YWCA once offered at the McIntyre building.

But the site also offered several services beyond childcare, like supportive housing and shelter services for women, before the YWCA sold it in December 2024.

YWCA Regina’s Chelsey Lemke said the organization previously operated two childcare centres out of their building on 1940 McIntyre, providing space for 130 children (Marija Robinson/980 CJME)

Those services didn’t stop with the sale, though.

Instead, they’ve moved to the YWCA kikakihtânaw Centre for Women and Families on 12th Avenue, according to the organization’s Senior Director of Development, Marketing and Communications, Chelsey Lemke.

“The building on McIntyre was not conducive to the extensive wraparound services that we needed to be able to provide within the community, and so we purpose-built this space to be able to provide wraparound services for women and families,” she said, referring to the new 12th Avenue site.

Melnyk said the renovation is becoming “a little bit bigger” than originally anticipated, but having a yard already in place helps (Marija Robinson/980 CJME)

The money made from the sale went towards the $70 million fundraising for the new location, and Lemke said once it was built, the YWCA had no reason for staying downtown.

“We didn’t need to double our spaces or our services. We just needed to do them in a better, more efficient way,” she said.

Now, for the first time since leaving, childcare is coming back to the building – although there’s no exact opening date yet.

The space is scheduled to open in late fall 2025, according to Melnyk, and once it does, the updated childcare centre will fill a need for Regina parents.

“Families that work downtown, and maybe even live downtown, have less opportunities to find care that’s close to their work or their homes,” she said. This space is “not just for the suburbs, it’s also for the downtown core as well.”