Childcare center at downtown Anchorage church set to open Oct. 1 with municipal funding

A new childcare center, 3 Elements Educare, opens Oct. 1 at First United Methodist Church of Anchorage on West Ninth Avenue downtown, funded by the municipal child care fund built on marijuana tax revenue. Its $200,000 capital grant is to launch what the award memo calls Alaska's first worker-directed nonprofit childcare center, on a cooperative governance model, with room for 82 children.

Rev. Emily Carroll, the church's lead pastor, filed an appearance request, a form asking to address the Assembly, and was listed as item 9.A. on its Sept. 15 agenda. "We were recipients of the ACCEE funding," Carroll wrote in her Sept. 1 request, thanking Assembly members for supporting it.

Anchorage voters created the Anchorage Child Care and Early Education Fund through Proposition 14 in 2023. The fund provides about $5 million a year. The Assembly approved the award on June 9, one of nine grants in a $1.25 million round drawn from 48 proposals; the work must be finished by Dec. 31.