Seventeen miles west of Downtown, past the long-term parking garages and the rental car lots, sits one of the more unassuming solutions to Pittsburgh's workforce puzzle: a daycare in a decommissioned airport terminal. Three years after Pittsburgh International Airport opened its employee childcare center, the facility has expanded beyond its original mandate. This summer, PIT opened enrollment to the public for the first time, offering a rare model other regions are now studying.
Built for a 4 a.m. Workforce
The center, operated by Learning Care under the La Petite Academy brand, was built inside a former terminal building because it was the most cost-effective option available to the Allegheny County Airport Authority. The idea took root under CEO Christina Cassotis, who wanted to solve a problem she understood personally: keeping a workforce with irregular shifts, long badging processes and a 17-mile commute from the city center close to the job. Airport jobs, from TSA screening to retail counters, rarely run on a nine-to-five schedule, and Pittsburgh's existing daycare options were not built to match.
TSA agent Angela Kearns is one of the parents who found relief in the arrangement. Before the center opened, her only childcare option was far from both her home and her gate, and her shifts started at 4 a.m. Now her three-year-old son Gavin is enrolled down the hall from where she badges in each morning, and she has already reserved a spot for her second child.
"We're a team, and teammates take care of each other. This is one of the ways that we can do that, and I think others can do it, too."
Christina Cassotis, CEO, Allegheny County Airport Authority
A National Trend, With Pittsburgh Getting There Early
Airport-based childcare remains rare nationally. San Francisco International opened the first known facility for its workforce in 1993, followed by Los Angeles International in 1998. Denver International is now studying a permanent center after finding the area around its airport qualifies as a childcare desert. Pittsburgh's center, built to serve PIT tenants' roughly 5,000 employees, was priced 10% below market rate, with priority enrollment for families receiving state childcare assistance.
Because the facility never reached capacity serving airport staff alone, the authority opened it to the surrounding community this summer. The move also gives it flexibility to backstop nearby employers: when the childcare center serving Dick's Sporting Goods headquarters in Findlay Township, less than five miles away, ran short on space, PIT's center stepped in.
The timing lines up with a broader shift in how employers think about childcare as a retention tool. Federal tax credits expanded this year now let employers claim 40% of the costs of building or operating an on-site facility, though the airport authority says it has not yet tapped that incentive, having leaned instead on philanthropic support to get the center built.
For a region trying to hold onto workers in tight labor markets, from aviation to healthcare to hospitality, PIT's experiment offers a template that does not require a Fortune 500 balance sheet, just a spare building, a motivated funder base and an employer willing to treat childcare as infrastructure rather than an amenity. Cassotis said she hopes other large Pittsburgh employers take notice. If a regional airport authority can make the math work, the case for skipping it gets harder to make.