It took a month for Sgt. 1st Class Angela Powell, a soldier in the 82nd Airborne Division, to secure a spot for her youngest daughter at one of the child development centers on Fort Bragg.

During that month, Powell was still required to work.

“It was really hard,” she said. “I had to find babysitters on Facebook pages.”

Powell knows she was relatively lucky. She said her Facebook feed is filled with other soldiers complaining about their months-long wait for on-post child care.

Over 1,000 children are on the waiting list for Fort Bragg’s 10 child development centers, according to Margaret Lilly, chief of Child and Youth Services for Fort Bragg. So she was excited on Sept. 12, when she and Fort Bragg garrison leadership broke ground on the installation’s newest and largest center.

“I cannot begin to formulate the words to express how important this day is,” Lilly told reporters on Friday. “It’s been a long time coming. It is well overdue.”

Located between Rhine Road and Normandy Drive, the center will accommodate 338 kids ages six weeks to five years old. Like others on Fort Bragg, the center will be open from 5:30 a.m. to 6 p.m. Between 96 and 106 new staff members will provide activities based on each child’s developmental age.

The center is expected to open toward the end of 2026 or sometime early in 2027, Lilly said. The total cost to build and furnish it is expected to be about $29 million. 

  • A white construction helmet with the Army Corps of Engineers red logo sits on a black table outside
    The Army Corps of Engineers and Cooper Tacia, a local construction contracting company, will design and build Fort Bragg’s newest child development center. Credit: Morgan Casey / CityView
  • A sign displays construction plans for Fort Bragg's newest child development center
    The new child development center on Fort Bragg will be 37,3000 square feet and feature outdoor playgrounds. Credit: Morgan Casey / CityView
  • A white male soldier wearing his camo uniform and black sunglasses speaks into a microphone in front of a podium
    Col. Chad Mixon, Fort Bragg Garrison Commander, spoke about soldiers’ challenges accessing child care at the groundbreaking ceremony for the installation’s newest child development center on Sept. 12, 2025. Credit: Morgan Casey / CityView
  • A group of men, women and a child wearing white construction helmets stand in front of a pile of dirt, tossing some into the air using shovels
    Leadership from Fort Bragg garrison and Child and Youth Services held a ground breaking ceremony for the installation’s newest and largest child development center on Sept. 12, 2025. Credit: Morgan Casey / CityView

“This will meet about half our needs,” North Carolina U.S. Rep. Richard Hudson, Fort Bragg’s representative in Congress who advocated for congressional funding for the center, said at the ceremony. 

The idea for the new center began to take shape in 2019, after Lilly and other Child and Youth Services employees heard about parents’ struggles to get their children into the few available slots at the installation. She said the need has only gotten louder.

Increasing the number of child development centers on the installation is critical to providing soldiers and their families a high quality of life, Col. Chad Mixon, Fort Bragg Garrison Commander, said in his remarks during the groundbreaking ceremony. He also hopes adding another center on post will help alleviate the strain on local child care facilities.

North Carolina is in a child care crisis as centers across the state have closed since the end of federal pandemic-era grants in March. Since then, six child care sites have closed in Cumberland County, according to data from the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services. The crisis has forced Cape Fear Valley Health and Cumberland County to build and expand child care centers exclusively for their employees. 

In July, Gov. Josh Stein established the Task Force on Child Care and Early Education and instructed its members to find solutions to make child care more accessible and affordable.

A white man with brown hair and wearing a black suit speaks into a microphone before a wooden podium with an American flag behind him
North Carolina U.S. Rep. Richard Hudson, Fort Bragg’s representative in Congress, spoke about the importance of Fort Bragg’s newest child development center at its groundbreaking ceremony on Sept. 12, 2025. Credit: Morgan Casey / CityView

To Hudson, soldiers’ difficulty accessing child care is a readiness issue. He doesn’t want deployed soldiers worrying about their families back home. He also doesn’t want the lack of child care to be the reason soldiers and their families choose not to re-enlist. 

“When you think about that soldier, an experienced soldier that we spent a lot of money training and who is having to decide whether they’re going to re-enlist or not, that’s a family decision,” Hudson told reporters following the groundbreaking ceremony. “If the family is not being taken care of, if the family can’t get the resources they need, it makes it less likely they’re going to re-enlist. So we’re losing the best and the brightest and folks that we’ve invested in when we don’t have facilities like this.”

Powell said she has no worries when her daughter is in one of Fort Bragg’s child development centers. Staff treat the children like family, she said, and the different activities help prepare them for kindergarten.

Lilly said more child development centers are expected for Fort Bragg, and that garrison leadership is in talks with her staff to find other solutions to parents’ child care issues.

CityView Reporter Morgan Casey is a corps member with Report for America, a national service program that places journalists into local newsrooms. Morgan’s reporting focuses on health care issues in and around Cumberland County and can be supported through the News Foundation of Greater Fayetteville.