Four babies, surrounded by foam blocks and plastic toys, giggle and eat food in one room of Northwestern’s KinderCare center in downtown Chicago. In another room, toddlers push toy vacuums in circles. Across the hall, 2-year-olds, eating crackers and juice, point and wave out the window.

Weeks after the KinderCare center’s Jan. 3 opening, 51 children already been enrolled and many more NU faculty, staff and students have placed themselves on the waiting list in preparation for their childrens’ births.

Those affiliated with the Evanston Campus already can take advantage of guaranteed child-care spots and discounted rates, thanks to a partnership between NU and the Evanston McGaw YMCA Child Care Center.

Employees and students on the Chicago Campus have never been offered such convenient child-care arrangements before.

In May, University President Henry Bienen announced the contract with KinderCare during his State of the University address.

Now about half of the 112 spots at the KinderCare center are guaranteed to faculty, staff and students. These individuals also will receive priority for spots in the center’s other programming, said director Christie Nitka. NU affiliates are eligible to receive discounted rates as well, she said.

Nitka,who helped open a KinderCare center in Lincoln Park last November, said the new center is performing “very well.” The Lincoln Park center is almost at full capacity, but the downtown center is quickly catching up.

“We actually are ahead of where the last center was at this point in time (after opening),” she said.

Faculty, staff and students on the Chicago Campus are excited about KinderCare’s programming and low staff-to-child ratio. About 20 staff members care for the children, according to Nitka.

“They’ve been very enthusiastic about the center opening because of the location as well as the caliber of care,” she said.

The center’s open-door policy allows parents to visit their children at any time and is popular among those who spend most of the day only a few blocks away, Nitka said.

“We have parents in each classroom that come in every day, ” she said.

Jill Niewoehner went to the center Tuesday afternoon to feed her 6-month-old daughter, Madeline. Niewoehner, who works at the Northwestern Medical Faculty Foundation, said she visits every day, and sometimes she and her co-workers who also have children at the center send them baby bottles.

“One of us will come over every couple of hours and check on the kids and then e-mail all the others, ‘yours is sleeping, yours is crying,'” Niewoehner said.

Niewoehner said she started bringing Madeline to KinderCare the day the center opened.

“I was relieved because it’s difficult for working parents to find quality day care in the city,” she said.

NU formed its partnership with KinderCare because of the dearth of other childcare providers in the area, especially for children who are under the age of 2, said Katie Krauch, the university’s manager of worklife, child and family resources.

“(An adequate selection) doesn’t exist,” Krauch said.

A spokeswoman for Northwestern Memorial Hospital, whose child-care center serves hospital employees, said the hospital has a long wait list but the fact that child care is lacking is “true in any city.”

“Quality care is always hard to come by,” she said. “Quality infant care is especially hard to come by. … I don’t think our wait list is different from anyone else’s.”

But child care is becoming a bigger factor for people considering coming to NU, Krauch said.

She said she has received inquiries about child care on the Chicago Campus from both new and potential employees and students.

“Before they even arrive, they’re asking for childcare,” Krauch said. “They tell me, ‘I want to know my childcare is arranged. I want an option before I accept my job offer.'”

In light of the increased demand for accessible child care, she said the KinderCare center might make the university more attractive to potential employees.

“We think this is a great benefit for NU employees, even to attract new employees, to make NU an employer of choice,” Krauch said.

Reach Tina Peng at [email protected].