Mary Washington Healthcare plans to demolish the building that currently houses the Kids’ Station day care center to construct a 24,500 square-foot medical clinic, according to a Zoning Map Amendment submitted to the City of Fredericksburg this week.
MWHC also plans to renovate the historic Snowden House “to facilitate increased stakeholder engagement with our medical staff, associates and community members,” according to supplemental information submitted with the application.
The additions and renovations planned for Snowden (2600 Mary Washington Blvd.) will include event space to the south end of the house as well as an “apartment-style residence,” MWHC Director of Communications and Marketing Emily Thurston wrote in an email to the Free Press.
Other modifications to the zoning map include a conference center and education facility that will include training space for MWHC’s Graduate Medical Education program, which was founded last year. That program is currently housed at 2300 Fall Hill Ave., which MWHC plans to vacate.
The conference center will be built on currently vacant land just to the south of Snowden house, wrote Thurston. According to a pre-application to the city’s Technical Review Committee, the planned conference center is a 39,000-square-foot building that will have approximately 80 employees.
The redevelopment of the parcel that currently houses Kids’ Station (1100 Sam Perry Blvd.) will only begin “once we have successfully supported KinderCare in finding a new location nearby for their childcare services,” Thurston wrote.
The Free Press previously reported that Kids’ Station would close in May, before an overwhelming community response led MWHC and KinderCare to agree to keep the facility, which serves many healthcare workers’ families, open for the foreseeable future.
MWHC intends to begin construction on all three projects this year, with completion in 2026, according to the supplemental filing.
On March 14 at 9:45 a.m., the projects will go before the city’s Technical Review Committee for staff discussion. They would then need to be approved by the planning commission and city council before construction can begin.
The Free Press discloses that Mary Washington Healthcare, an individual or organization central to this story, is a major donor to the Free Press. Donors do not exercise influence over newsroom operations.
