The Watertown Boys & Girls Club and a daycare center are at odds with each other, and if a motion to evict is successful, 60 families could be scrambling to find immediate care for their children.

First Path Day Care Center has taken up tenancy at the WBGC for 26 years, but it has been told to move out of the space as club officials eye a $1.6 million ground-floor renovation to meet the “growing need for quality after-school care.”

First Path filed for bankruptcy in late July to “take advantage of the protections afforded under the law, including an automatic stay” as a building it bought elsewhere in Watertown in early 2023 for $2.4 million is not ready to be moved into.

The WBGC filed a motion in federal bankruptcy court last Monday to lift the protection of eviction, prompting uncertainty for First Path officials and families.

“To have this potential risk of losing out on a daycare option for our kids that we’ve relied on for years is of course very scary and unsettling,” Watertown resident Tanya Mandel told the Herald. “If this daycare was to close even for a few months or a few weeks, it would be a significant disruption to our family.”

The ground-floor renovation that the WBGC has targeted for years would lead to a space for a “brand new licensed childcare program … the only in Watertown to provide licensed after-school childcare for up to 85 children” in kindergarten-grade 3.

That’s according to a letter Alan Medville, chairman of the WBGC’s Board of Directors, wrote to the hyperlocal, Watertown News, late last month.

Medville highlighted how construction is due to start in August and is expected to finish by the end of the year. “We are ready to move ahead, but we can’t,” he wrote. “The barrier is First Path Daycare.”

The club informed First Path of its intention to “not renew their lease in December 2021, 18 months before the lease was due to expire on June 30, 2023.” Since then, Medville said the daycare has failed to “live up to their agreements” even after WBGC granted extensions to vacate.

“First Path (has) threatened … to launch a PR campaign making the WBGC out to be the bad guy’ in order to further delay moving out,” Medville wrote. “While we are grateful for the past relationship we have had with First Path, we are very disappointed in their response to our patience and support. Further delay could add significant costs to our project.”

In court filings, attorneys for WBGC outlined how First Path has “asserted its new location could be ready at the end of October,” but that estimate they wrote is “highly speculative.” The Watertown Zoning Board of Appeals denied issuing a building permit on July 30.

“Based on the scheduled start of construction related to the Project this month, WBGC respectfully requests expedited determination of this motion to avoid any further delays,” attorneys wrote. “Any delays in recovery of the Leased Space subject WBGC to potential increases in construction costs as well as overall completion of the Project.”

First Path officials argue that they emailed WBGC in 2020 about negotiating a new lease and that the club turned the request down after it said to “hang tight” and that the “process is starting!”

The daycare center has also paid “50% more in rent to stay” at WBGC while construction on its new location plays out, Program Director Aleksandra Pikus and General Manager Max Bolyasnyy wrote in a letter to Watertown News earlier this month.

Pikus and Bolyasnyy argued a potential conflict of interest as the WBGC’s building and lot are city-owned, and board members are “connected with the City in one way or another.”

“To add insult to injury,” Pikus and Bolyasnyy wrote, “Mr. Medville and the WBGC Board have decided to take this issue public and accuse us of “making the WBGC out to be the ‘bad guy.’ Seems like they have done that instead. It is a sad end to a more than quarter-century productive partnership.”

Tanya Mandel and her husband, Denis, have sent their two children, ages 2 and 5, to First Path for years. They said there’s a “real sense of urgency” with the predicament as they’re working parents who would have to look for alternative arrangements if their children lose the “stable environment.”

“It’s really boiling my blood to think that we could have kids out of daycare for months and months,” Denis Mandel told the Herald. “It’s terrible, it’s really scary how politicized and bureaucratic it is. … It’s not constructive anymore.”