The idea for Active Minds Academy came to us early in November of 2017. With both of us working in childcare for so long, we spent a great deal of time just discussing our dream centers. By the end of November, we decided to make the dream a reality and started the long process of securing funding. The first go around with the bank was not looking so promising, and it's safe to say we were very discouraged. We switched to Town and Country Credit Union and our Lender (Jake Klobuchar) was absolutely amazing and found programs that would help us secure all that we needed.
Once we knew we had the funding we set out to find the perfect location. Not an easy task when we had a specific vision in mind for our dream center, and if you have ever met us you know we can be picky people when it comes to our little ones! Our Realtor (Kelly Mullaney) worked very hard to find us the right place and answered all our many calls, questions and emails. The first place we were interested in took months to try and secure and we ended up losing that one and having to start the whole process over again. We started back up looking right away! Boy, did we tour a ton of options. Nothing at this point jumped out at us as the unique space we were looking for! Then we found it, a large space had been sitting empty for years! We fell in love with it right away and started the process because we just had to have it. I didn’t take very long to have a big let down again, we lost this building also. The owners of the space just failed to see our vision and we could never reach an agreement for build-up. We were crushed to say the least. We were about ready to give up, we had toured every available building in the FM Area at this point.
A few days passed, and we received a call from our realtor that an investor was purchasing a property and he was wondering if she had anyone interested in a large commercial property. We set up to go see it the very next day! The first time we toured it we were unsure of the space, it had been a very large salon and day spa so upon first arriving it was tough to see how we were going to turn it into a big fun space for children. As the evening went on after our visit we talked more and more about it and the ideas started flowing. We met the following day with the building owner and let me tell you, that’s what sealed the deal! The building owner (Tyler Brandt) totally saw our vision and was very excited about it as well. We spent about an hour just discussing the build up and he was supportive of everything we wanted to do to turn the building into a beautiful, functional space for the kids. Finally finding an owner that believed in our vision was the last piece of the puzzle. We signed our Letter of Intent that very day!
Active Minds Academy officially opened Monday, September 17th, 2018. It has been a whirlwind of a first year! These days we can be found around the center playing and enjoying our time with the kids or doing countless projects to add to and improve the center!