Photo Provided The Newbridge Center opens a new location at 1000 Main St. in downtown Wheeling to provide childcare and coffee to the community.

WHEELING — Newbridge Academy for Kids officially opened its doors Saturday.

The childcare center at 1000 Main St. aims to serve the youth of the Ohio Valley. The location is broken into two parts, the NB Cafe in the front and the academy for kids in the rear, or Market Street side, of the building.

Newbridge Church, formerly the Vineyard Church, purchased the location in 2022 and spent the last eight months renovating and restoring the historic building. THe structure previously housed the Children’s Museum of the Upper Ohio Valley. Prior to that, from the 1970s-’90s, it was home to Doc Williams Country Store.

The back of the building is where Newbridge Academy is located.

The 23,000-square-foot, state-of-the-art child care facility will be able to accommodate over 200 children.

“The reason we decided to do child care isn’t because it’s a great moneymaker or anything, but because it is needed in the community,” Figaretti said. “When we purchased this building, we purchased it because we are meeting across the street at the capital and needed a viable children’s space for Sunday mornings.”

He added that after purchasing the building, organization members realized the space was massive and asked what the church could do with the extra space.

“We started asking ourselves the question: How can we do the most good with this resource? I mean it’s right on the gateway corner of downtown Wheeling right across from the Suspension Bridge. It’s an amazing facility,” he said. “As we asked the question, child care came right to the top, I think it’s one of the two greatest needs in our community. One is childcare and two is addiction recovery. And so we saw that need and, you know, people are waiting 20 to 30 months to get a new child into childcare, which means they go from two to one household income for that time period.”

Figaretti added that when a household loses a source of income from not being able to have child care it becomes a huge financial burden and he wants to be able to alleviate that stress for parents.

He said Newbridge is still in the middle of its fundraising campaign but saw the need for childcare in the current economy and decided to not wait until the funds were completely raised to open the facility.

“We decided we weren’t going to wait to do this until we raised all of the money or it would be years and years until it happened. In an effort to be a proactive part of solving the problem, we decided to go ahead and just do the project,” Figaretti said.

There are currently 16 people on staff, but Figaretti believes that the center will eventually have around 50 staff members.

In addition to the new center, Newbridge partnered with the city of Wheeling to open a gated outdoor playground. According to Figgaretti, a daycare is required to have an outdoor play place for children. After learning of the need for an outdoor playground he approached Wheeling City Council about the possibility of partnering to provide children a new, state-of-the-art play place in the heart of downtown. Working with the city, Newbridge was able to secure $201,000 from the city’s Upper Floor Incentive Plan to utilize a portion of the plaza behind its building to construct an outdoor play place with an 8-foot fence to ensure the safety of all of the children.

“It’s not like a plastic playground. There’s ramps, a stump jump, a balance log, slackline and a tunnel through a tent. It really turned out great, and the kids love it,” Figaretti said.

Although the play place is owned by Newbridge, anyone is welcome to use the facility. From 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. Newbridge Academy has exclusive use, but at any other time the play place is open to the public.

The front of the building at the corner of Main and 10th streets is a coffee shop that aims to give area residents a gathering place that isn’t alcohol based.

“We wanted to create a place in the evenings for the youth to gather that’s not Sheetz parking lot,” Newbridge Church Lead Pastor Chris Figaretti said. “There aren’t too many places for young people or anybody to hang out for that matter besides bars, so I want a place where people can gather and build community.”

The cafe is open daily, with operating hours from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Thursday, 6 a.m. to 10 p.m. Friday and Saturday and 7 a.m. to 2 p.m. Sunday. Figaretti said he plans to have acoustic acts, open mics, game nights and several other events regularly to provide a welcoming and entertaining space for customers.

“The cafe is another part of the dream for this place. It’s a place for people to gather on this end of town as well as drink some awesome coffee, boba tea and all of the other coffee drinks,” Figaretti said.