Big changes may soon be coming to Youth and Family Outreach, a Portland child care and preschool dedicated to serving low-income and otherwise at-risk children and families. The Portland Planning Board is scheduled Tuesday night to look at the child care center’s plan to knock down its existing facility on the corner of Cumberland Avenue and Preble Street and replace it with a six-story mixed-use building housing an expanded child care facility and 48 affordable and 12 market-rate apartments. Youth and Family Outreach, a Portland childcare and preschool dedicated to serving low-income and at-risk children and families, is going before the Portland Planning Board on Tuesday night to seek permission to knock down its existing facility on the corner of Cumberland Avenue and Preble Street to construct a six-story building housing an expanded childcare and 48 affordable and 12 market-rate apartments.
Their current building, the Preble Street Chapel, was built in 1851 but is is not in a historic district or designated as an official historic landmark. Brianna Soukup/Staff Photographer The nonprofit child care’s executive director, Camelia Babson-Haley, said in a phone interview Monday that she hopes the planned expansion will make a dent in the crisis-level shortage of affordable housing and child care slots . Their current building is the Preble Street Chapel, which was built in 1851.
But the building is not in a historic district or designated as an official historic landmark.
