Worcester State, Guild of St. Agnes open $8M childcare facility in former bowling alley

PHOTO | Courtesy of The Guild of St. Agnes The University Collaborative Early Education Center at 248 Mill St.

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By Isabel Tehan

The Guild of St. Agnes, a nonprofit childcare profit childcare agency, opened a new child care and early education center in Worcester in collaboration with Worcester State University on Thursday.

Called the University Collaborative Early Education Center, the facility opens at 248 Mill St. amid a national childcare crisis.

The center has 152 spaces for babies and children from 4 weeks to 5 years old, according to a Thursday press release from the Guild of St. Agnes. Half of those spaces are reserved for low-income families who are eligible for subsidized child care.

The Guild of St. Agnes purchased the 17,600-square-foot building, formerly a bowling alley, in 2021 for $1 million, according to the press release. It has since undergone $7 million in renovations.

The center is a university learning lab for WSU, and early education majors will receive on-site instruction. The building was redesigned to include classrooms for adult education.

This is the eighth child care site for the Guild of St. Agnes, which will now serve 1,800 children across Massachusetts in combination with its family home and school-age programming.

“The partnership between the Guild of St. Agnes and Worcester State represents a collaborative approach to addressing a community need – both for child care and for an academic role in preparing the workforce that supports child care,” WSU President Barry Maloney said in the press release. “The new center will serve as a model for innovation in early childhood education in our community and around the state.”