"I've never come across anything quite like Crème before," says Melissa Bailey, executive director of the local facility and a 25-year veteran of the education industry. "The children do really well here because they aren't in the same room every day."
Most activities take place in Crème's interior, resembling a Victorian village under a 34-foot skylight. The facility's features include a computer lab, art and music studios, library, dance studio, math lab, gym and a mock TV studio. Exterior areas include child-sized tennis and basketball courts and other recreational facilities. Crème centers typically cost more than $7 million to develop, according to company officials.
"Some of the parents work in Bishop Gate," says Bailey, noting that the park is populated by such corporate names as Okidata, NHL Films, Ford and Hewlett-Packard. "But the location is also great for commuters. Many of our local parents can easily drop off their children en route to work in Philadelphia and New York City."
The upcoming Bridgewater location in Somerset County, meanwhile, will be located on Route 202 and Milltown Road, on the site of a shuttered Frank's Nursery & Crafts outlet. The site was acquired by and is being redeveloped by the New Hyde Park, NY-based Kimco Realty Corp. The multi-tenant project will feature a 21,000-sf Crème as its anchor, along with a 6,500-sf retail pad.
"We usually look for strategically located three-acre parcels on which we can build our freestanding facility," says Bruce Karpas, chairman and CEO of Crème de la Crème Inc. "We operate every one of our facilities and either self-develop them with a subsequent sale-leaseback transaction upon completion, or enter into a build-to-suit arrangement with a developer."
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