Early Ed Center OK’d For Former Cine‑4

Ten new early childhood classrooms to accommodate 80 more kids in need of care are one big step closer to coming to an ex-Flint Street movie theater this summer, thanks to an approval by local land-use commissioners.

The City Plan Commission voted unanimously during their latest meeting Wednesday night in support of a sliding-scale child care center’s proposal to turn a former movie theater into spaces for nap time, lesson learning, and community coming together. 

The Friends Center for Children, a Fair Haven Heights-based nonprofit known for its work not only providing for the city’s youth and parents but for generating subsidized teacher housing for their staff throughout New Haven, got site plan approval for a three-phase plan which will replace the former Cine 4 movie theater at 25 Flint St. That movie theater closed last summer after 51 years of operation. The upcoming childcare center will serve children aged six weeks through three years.

“Unfortunately we’re no longer able to have movies… but it looks like it’s going to be a wonderful reuse of a building,” Commission Chair Leslie Radcliffe said. ​“I don’t think I could think of anything better than to have another educational space for children.”

With support from the Commission, the Friends Center is slated to start ​“phase one” of the project this summer. That will mean rehabilitating the current four-theater studio, paving a 42-space parking lot, and building out play spaces and new sidewalks around the property. The current building on site, the ex-movie theater, will be converted into four classrooms plus offices and storage space. One of the four theaters inside will remain an auditorium for community events and movie screenings.

The second part of the project involves constructing a new, 8,700 square foot building to house six additional classrooms and a library. That undertaking is expected to take about 12 months to complete, following none months of work on phase one.

Friends Center Executive Director Allyx Schiavone also mentioned a possible ​“third phase” during her team’s presentation to the City Plan Commission. She said the Friends Center is still waiting to solidify funding sources before building and determining how such a space would be used by the organization.

Like their other sites, the upcoming childcare complex will operate between 7:30 a.m. through 5:30 p.m. year-round. However, Schiavone said, the intention is also to offer some additional evening and weekend care at the Flint Street location.

“Only four percent of slots offered in New Haven are evening or weekend,” she said of New Haven’s childcare landscape. ​“We’re doing a pilot site here.”