One local daycare's Downtown Days are numbered.

The Downtown Days Daycare will close the doors of its Sixth Avenue facility Sept. 15 after more than two decades of welcoming young children through its doors.

"It's been a really fun ride,” Lynda Peters, who operates the centre, said in an interview this morning.

With the daycare's lease on the building coming up, Peters said she decided not to renew it given the age and upkeep now required on the building. The structure originally served as a laundry mat for the U.S. Army.

"It's just not economically feasible,” Peters said.

Daycare staff and parents were informed of the closure earlier this month. All have been able to move on to new plans.

"I was really amazed,” she said of the easy transition that's happening for most.

One of her five staffers downtown will open her own day home with a number of the children from the daycare set to be taken care of there.

Others have been able to find spots open in other child care centres throughout the city.

A number of new day cares have opened in the past year, including one in the downtown area.

The closure of Downtown Days leaves six licensed day cares and three licensed day homes operating in the neighbourhood. There's a total 24 licensed day cares and 26 licensed day homes in the city.

Peters said when she informed parents the daycare will be closing, she provided each with the list of licensed child care facilities from the territory's child care services branch.

As they called around, parents would keep one another updated on the number of spaces available for various age groups around town.

Each child leaving the centre now has a spot waiting at another facility, she said.

The downtown location was approved by the Yukon government to have 48 children. However, Peters said in recent years, the daycare made the choice to lower the number of children in its programs.

The rise in after-school programs happening around the city has also helped ease the burden on the daycare.

As Peters pointed out, caring for school-age children in a daycare setting can be expensive.

While the children only need a couple of hours of care each day through the week, the daycare has to provide the staff, which often means paying them a full-time wage.

Downtown Days has a second location which opened on Range Road in 2009.

However, Peters said, it's full, so there weren't spaces available for the 18-month and up age groups now in the downtown location.

There are a couple of staffers who will move up the hill to the newer location, which provides care for infants and children 12 months old and up.

For now though, staff are focused on wrapping up their last two weeks at the downtown daycare with the kids and packing up the wears of more than 20 years in the city's core.

While Downtown Days has called the Sixth Avenue building home for more than two decades, it originally opened in the basement of the New Asia restaurant in 1990.

Eighteen months later, Peters moved the daycare to its Sixth Avenue location.

The daycare's claim to fame, she said, is that it's been a successful business in part of the city where many thought a business couldn't be successful.

She's loved knowing the many children who have grown up at the centre.

Some have even returned to work at the daycare.

In packing up, Peters and others there have been smiling as they come across photos of the children over the years.

Equally happy to be given the photos are the parents.

Peters said she expects an "eclectic little group” of people involved with the daycare over the years will gather to bid goodbye to their Downtown Days next month.

"There will be a quiet toast,” she said.