Mountain Tots Breaks Ground on Eagle Expansion

Aspen —The air in Haymeadow still holds the chill of early summer, a crispness that settles into your lungs before you even realize you’ve taken a deep breath. It’s the kind of morning that makes you want to stay in bed, but for a handful of people gathered on a patch of dirt near Eagle, the cold was secondary to the weight of a shovel. On Aug. 17, that dirt became history. Mountain Tots Preschool broke ground on a new facility, a physical anchor for an organization that has been quietly shaping the early lives of Eagle County’s children since 1974.

Silvana Flaherty, the executive director of Mountain Tots Preschool, stood before the crowd with a shovel in hand, her words cutting through the morning quiet. “This groundbreaking is about growth — growing our capacity to nurture more of Eagle County’s children and support more of our working families,” she said. She paused, letting the silence stretch just enough for the weight of that statement to land. “We’re especially excited that this expansion allows us to welcome many of the families who have been on our waitlist for months, and to keep building a place where every child can learn, play, and thrive.”

If you’ve tried to find childcare in this valley, you know the waitlist isn’t a metaphor. It’s a reality that stretches for months, sometimes years. Eagle County has long been labeled a childcare desert, a term that feels less like a description and more like an indictment. The new Haymeadow facility is projected to open in early 2027, and according to the Vail Daily’s reporting on the event, it will expand Mountain Tots’ capacity by 122%. That’s more than double. It means space for over 60 additional children annually, a number that transforms from an abstract statistic into a very real Tuesday morning when you’re no longer scrambling to find someone who can watch your toddler while you work.

The project didn’t happen in a vacuum, of course. Jamie Woodworth, a board member who led the capital campaign dubbed “Igniting Curiosity, Inspiring Futures,” framed the day as a collective act of will. “Breaking ground today is the result of an entire community deciding that our youngest kids and working families are worth investing in,” Woodworth told the Vail Daily. The funding came from a patchwork of local and state support, including grants from the Kenneth King Foundation, the Buell Foundation, the town of Eagle, and Eagle County. Even U.S. Senators Michael Bennet and John Hickenlooper helped steer support through the Senate Appropriations Committee. Woodworth noted that contractors donated time and materials, a detail that speaks to the kind of grassroots energy this project required.

Mountain Tots has held a Colorado Shines Level 4 rating for most of its existence, a state quality designation that signals rigorous teaching environments and strong curricula. With the expansion, the preschool aims to deepen its participation in Colorado’s Universal Preschool and Child Care Assistance Program, ensuring that the new seats aren’t just available, but accessible to families across income levels.

There’s a warmth to the idea that a nonprofit founded by parents seeking options for working women in 1974 is still here, still digging into the dirt, still betting on the next generation. The construction will be loud for a while — jackhammers, trucks, the smell of fresh concrete mixing with the pine scent that clings to Haymeadow in summer. But by early 2027, the noise will fade into background hum, replaced by something else. The sound of children’s voices, bright and unfiltered, filling a room that was once just an empty lot. You can feel it in the way people lingered at the groundbreaking, looking not just at the dirt, but at what will rise from it.