Historical September–October 2022 article. Dates, prices, services and contacts describe the source period; current availability has not been established.
My wife and I accidentally moved to Saint Louis just before Christmas 2019.
We were simply visiting my parents in my hometown of Saint Louis for two weeks before flying back to our adopted home of Xiamen, China.
But the premature birth of our lovely daughter Feronia coupled with the onset of covid-19 blocked our return to China. By the summer of 2022, we knew what we wanted to do, but not where. Given our experience in early childhood education and our desire to work from home until Nia reaches first grade, our goal was to find a house that would allow us to run a home daycare.
We looked at dozens of homes and cities in the area before visiting the Skinker Debaliviere neighborhood. Our first visit to Westminster Place was fortuitous.
We met a neighbor watering his lawn and chatted about the neighborhood and the house next door, which was up for sale.
The couple was generous with their time and told us all about the neighborhood, dating back to their arrival more than 40 years ago.
They explained how the area was at a fork in the road back then and that the area’s residents joined together to preserve the neighborhood as a true community. That was the point at which we fell in love with the Skinker Debaliviere neighborhood.
But would the neighborhood love us back?
We knew that opening a home daycare would require a conditional use permit from the city for a home business.
In practice, that meant getting consent (or at least no objections) from as many neighbors as possible before we felt comfortable making a bid on the home.
This was at the peak of last year’s homebuying frenzy so it was a wild time as we spoke with multiple neighbors, so that we didn’t surprise anyone with a home daycare proposal.
We explained that we wanted to provide home daycare as a service to the community that would bring the neighborhood together. Daycare is so important but also so hard to find and we simply hoped to add richness to this community’s tapestry.
We saw lots of optimism and no red flags, so we took the plunge and made the winning offer for our lovely home. That was really just the start of our journey, however. Above and beyond the normal repairs that all the lovely older homes of our neighborhood regularly require, we also had to make a host of upgrades to the home in order to make it suitable for a home daycare.
We installed a fire alarm system, security system, video cameras, sprinklers, artificial grass for the backyard, a swing set, better fencing, new air conditioning and so much more. Simultaneously, we had to navigate the process of applying for a conditional use permit for a home business.
The process was lengthy but, and this is shocking, it was actually enjoyable.
We had the opportunity to engage with the Skinker Debaliviere Community Council and to canvas the neighborhood. Crucially, more than a dozen neighboring families offered formal support to our home daycare proposal. That was the moment when we realized how blessed we are to live in this home. And we’re even happier because our daughter now lives on a street where people care for and take care of each other.
It really is a dream come true in terms of finding a community that will help Nia become an amazing person.
Now that we have our conditional use permit and our daycare license from the state of Missouri, we have officially opened Lion’s Pride Academy, offering home daycare to up to nine friends of Nia.
If anyone is interested in finding out more about our home daycare, please feel free to reach out directly.
We would love to know more of our neighbors and to share our home with your family. www.lionsprideacademy.com (314) 863-7080
Original photograph caption
The Powell family.
Originally published in The Times of Skinker-DeBaliviere, September–October 2022.
Read this article in the original newspaper issue.
Original source: SD_Times2022_09.pdf, printed page(s) 5; PDF page(s) 5.
