A few years back, Deanna Conley had just moved to Newport, Rhode Island with a 3-month-old and 3-year-old. She soon joined a focus group for a new type of club forming in her area.
This club—part daycare, part adult coworking space, and a little bit gym—would fulfill Conley’s post-moving needs: It offered community in a town where she knew no one, a space to work as a small business owner without an office, and affordable childcare. “The cost of a nanny was really prohibitive for us,” Conley says. Her older son had been in traditional daycare prior to the family’s move, but Conley thought this club might be a bit different.
“I was really interested in and excited about this new idea of whole family care,” she says, “versus just childcare.”
The club eventually became a daycare-gym-cowork