PowerPlay To Open New Riverview Daycare This November
MONCTON – A local daycare chain is about to take the next step in an expansion that will bring 900 daycare spaces to Greater Moncton.
J.P. Leblanc, owner and founder of PowerPlay Academy, told Huddle he hopes to open his fourth daycare in Riverview this November, at a 2.3-acare berth located at 500 Hillsborough Road, in Riverview.
“It depends on supply chain and how quickly we can get materials. It’s been a tough go. First there was a delay with the plumbing and then the electrical stuff was delayed and now my air exchangers are delayed again,” he explained.
Leblanc said he plans to open five daycares in Greater Moncton. He currently has three in operation in Dieppe and Moncton.
Leblanc first launched PowerPlay – a licensed daycare offering baby, preschool, after-school, and full-time summer programs – in his Dieppe backyard in 2014.
“We just wanted to see if my wife and I enjoyed daycare life, so we wanted to start a small one,” Leblanc said.
“It was sports-themed with a hockey rink in the back yard and a sliding hill because we have a walkout basement. We were right on the river and we had a big country backyard. We filled it right away.”
Following on that success, Leblanc opened a 170-child daycare in Dieppe in 2015.
Later, Leblanc bought land in Moncton, building a bilingual daycare at 1220 Ryan Road, before expanding and building a separate building at 1240 Ryan Road, splitting the consolidated bilingual academy into a separate Anglophone and Francophone daycares. Construction wrapped up on the second Ryan Road location in September 2020.
He said the plan was originally to open another daycare in Moncton on Elmwood Road, but Leblanc noted the pandemic threw a wrench in the cogs.
“Everything was delayed, so it was either going to be the Riverview one or the Elmwood Drive one. I got the property for the Riverview daycare first, so we got this one going,” he said.
Leblanc plans to open the second PowerPlay Daycare in Moncton in September 2023. When that final fifth daycare is open, he intends to hire about 25 more staff members, bolstering it to 100.
To accommodate that many kids, Leblanc said a location needs about 35 square feet per child, not counting the bathrooms, hallways, and other amenities.
“I’ve got about 7,000 square feet or 8,000 square feet for 180 kids,” he said of the Riverview daycare.
Going forward, Leblanc is expecting an uptick in parents looking for spots in the after-school program PowerPlay offers after the pandemic and health measures caused a significant drop in that particular program.
“We expanded some of those classrooms. We lost a lot of our after-school enrollments because federal workers were still working from home, call center workers were working from home, and sales people were all working from home – because of Covid. Times change. We had more need for pre-school rather than after-school, but before that, it was the opposite,” Leblanc said.
PowerPlay Daycare markets itself as a place where children are encouraged to stay active. Each location boasts a skating rink that can be converted into a combination of basketball courts, soccer fields, and tennis courts in the warmer months.
“We’re not a sports daycare – just an active daycare. We’ve got lots of stuff for them to do,” Leblanc said. “I like having a lot of space for the kids to enjoy themselves.”
Sam Macdonald is a Huddle reporter in Moncton. Send him your feedback and story ideas at [email protected].