MACHIAS – Plans to build a child care center and early childhood education facility at the University of Maine at Machias are forging ahead, thanks to a $150,000 grant from the Libra Foundation.

The new center is the third phase of UMM’s Center for Lifelong Learning and will serve parents in the Machias area as well as help UMM improve its academic programs in early childhood development and behavior science, said Wayne A. Lobley, UMM spokesman.

Barbara and Ken Manchester, the co-chairpersons of the university’s capital campaign, said the $150,000 from the Libra Foundation and more than $50,000 in additional donations and pledges will be used as local match for a $200,000 Maine Community Block Grant.

The university expects to seek construction bids in the spring of 2001.Preliminary plans, developed by Stewart Brecher Architects of Bar Harbor, call for a single-story structure to include play areas for infants, toddlers and preschool children, as well as a central office, crib room, kitchen, restrooms and storage space.

It will be constructed across from Reynolds Athletic and Education Center, the complex that houses the first two phases of UMM’s Center for Lifelong Learning.

The first phase – a $3 million Olympic-sized swimming pool and fitness center opened in December 1999. The George Simpson Murdock bookstore – an expanded college-community bookstore – and Internet Cafe were dedicated in July.

UMM is contracting with the Washington Hancock Community Agency to operate the new child care center, which can house 24 children full time and up to 50 children part time and full time. The town of Machias, which applied for the grant funds, is also a partner.

WHCA has run a child care center on the campus of Washington County Technical College in Calais for more than 20 years.

UMM President John Joseph said in October that the university envisions the child care center as a model.

Not since the closing of the campus elementary school has such a setting been available to UMM, Joseph said.

The $150,000 grant is the second gift the Portland-based Libra Foundation has made to UMM’s Center for Lifelong Learning. The foundation also underwrote the free community swimming lessons that UMM offers at the new aquatic center.

The Libra Foundation was created in 1989 through the backing of the late Elizabeth Noyce, the former wife of Intel Corp. founder Robert N. Noyce.

Since its founding, the Libra Foundation has provided more than $19 million in grants and gifts to a variety of charitable and nonprofit organizations in Maine, including many in Washington County.

Owen and Annie Wells and Elizabeth Flaherty of the Libra Foundation visited the UMM campus in September, and Lobley said they were impressed by the components of the Center for Lifelong Learning.

They were particularly supportive of the way the people of Washington County and UMM have worked together, he said.