Daycare center planned for church

Sleepy Hollow Methodist Church

The Fairfax County Planning Commission has endorsed the establishment of a daycare center in an existing building at Sleepy Hollow Methodist Church at 3435 Sleepy Hollow Lane, Falls Church.

The Board of Supervisors is scheduled to consider the proposal on Sept. 12.

The special exception amendment would allow a daycare center allowing up to 99 children, but the applicant, Eymy Telleria, says she expects to have about 25 to 40.

Telleria has been operating WeCare DayCare in her home at 3410 Slade Court on the other side of Sleepy Hollow Road for the past one and a-half years. That center serves about 12 children at a time, ranging from 6 weeks to 5 years old.

There are 18 families on a waiting list. “That’s why we want to open a new place,” she says. “It’s a very good program, very educational.”

Telleria hopes to reopen in the church’s educational building in 2018. It would be open 7 a.m-6 p.m. Monday through Friday, when the building is not being used by the church. A new outdoor recreational area would be added.

After the zoning application is approved, the next step is obtaining a child daycare license from the Virginia Department of Social Services.

The zoning application is actually a modification of previously approved, but never established, childcare facility at Sleepy Hollow United Methodist Church in 1988.

There’s an interesting side note in the Planning and Zoning Department staff report on the project: After noting that “neighboring properties are all developed with single-family residential homes on roughly half-acre lots,” it says there is a “large 10-acre parcel directly to the northeast, which is currently undeveloped but is the subject of a pending by-right subdivision plan to also develop as single-family home sites.” That would be the wooded Glavis property fronting Sleepy Hollow Road which has a vacant farmhouse and accessory buildings.