Special Report: Family Ties: Day Care At the Office

To most parents, a good day-care program that costs $50 a week seems the impossible dream. But in Edison, N.J., such a place exists: in a corner of the Heller Industrial Park is the John Kenney Child Care Center, where 84 children, from 18 months to 5 years old, play with toys, career down slides and learn to spell and share. Says Bruce Oakley, whose daughter Laura, 4, attends the center: “This is not a place where you just dump the kid off. It’s great.”

Half of what the day care costs is paid by the owner of the center and the industrial park, Isaac Heller. The founder of Remco toys, Heller, 62, says the center, which is open to all Edison residents, has helped make his park an attractive location for the 38 firms that lease space. Observes Heller: “Not everybody is a yuppie earning $100,000. Some people earn less, and their children deserve the same care as rich people’s children.”