Last week, there were no children playing in the brightly colored park located at 22nd and South streets. Shrouded by tall shrubs, leafy trees and a wrought-iron fence, the privately owned neighborhood playground that was once a haven for preschool-aged children doesn’t get much use these days. In fact, its usefulness has nearly expired. On June 30, the playground and the long-standing child-care center adjacent to it will close for good.

Since 1988, the Graduate Child Care Center, a facility run by the Graduate Hospital (an entity of Tenet Healthcare Corp.), has offered daycare services to hospital employees, as well as to an increasing number of neighborhood residents. Eight weeks before the center's scheduled closing, a three-paragraph letter announcing the decision was sent to parents and staff. Immediately, a sense of outrage set in.

"It caught us all off-guard," says Bill Meinel, a father of two at the center, ages 5 and 3. His wife is a nurse within the hospital network. "We were given no warning. We weren't asked how this would affect us. It left us without options. All we could think of was, ŒHow do we save this thing?'"

In defense of the unpopular decision, a Graduate Hospital spokesperson explained to one parent that the average hospital employee was 40 years old and, therefore, no longer having children.

"I have news for them," Meinel says. "My wife is pregnant with our third child, she works for the hospital and she'll be 43 at the end of the month."

Among other reasons for closing, Graduate Hospital cited decreasing employee enrollment compounded by increasing costs. But when challenged by parents, hospital administrators said neither an increase in enrollment nor charging higher fees would keep its doors open. As the summer begins, 50 children under the age of 6, their parents and the seven full-time center employees -- who were cautioned not to speak to the press -- will need somewhere else to go.

"Revenue was only one part of the consideration to close the center," says Mark Schwartz, a hospital spokesperson. "From a hospital standpoint, we didn't want to be responsible for running it. We opened this daycare center as a service to the employees but as it turned out, less employees and more other community residents started using the center. Besides, we're in the health-care business, not the daycare business."

Schwartz says the hospital had been amenable to relinquishing the center to another daycare provider, but during the 18 months the decision had been batted around, there were no takers.

"We're trying to work with [the parents] as best we can," Schwartz says. "We've made suggestions for other places and given them a couple months notice -- that's more than required by the state. We're not trying to be callous."

As news of the closing circulated, Katy Morris, the mother of a 2-year-old, mounted a full-scale campaign to keep the center open. She queried the hospital about other options, made countless phone calls to child-care advocates, embarked on a voluminous letter-writing crusade, coaxed a local television station into airing a story about the problem and even enrolled in a state-sponsored daycare center orientation program to familiarize herself with the procedures necessary for managing such a facility.

"When we got the notice, I was in shock," Morris says. "Everybody was. We didn't see it coming. I wrote letters; other people wrote letters. FOX [TV-29] came out the next week and did a little thing. But we found out that no matter what we did, we weren't going to be able to keep the center open. So, I changed my strategy."

Morris says that Graduate Hospital administrators seemed willing to transfer the lease. So, Morris put together a business plan and started networking.

"I learned that I'd have to go through a lengthy process involving the city and the state. There were so many layers, it would have been impossible for me to take care of everything in less than two months," Morris says. "I realized that I wasn't going to be able to do it by July."

Morris was told that the monthly price tag for the 4,800-square-foot facility, the playground, a few parking spots and, hopefully, the building security staff, would be a whopping $5,400.

While Morris says she did most of the legwork (she's an information technology professional with a flexible schedule), she knew the parents fully supported her efforts. With time running out, though, arrangements at daycare centers in other parts of the city needed to be made.

"It was a lot of pressure, having everybody's hopes invested in the process," she says. "But after completing the [daycare center] orientation, that's when I knew I couldn't do it."

On July 1, Morris' daughter, Talia, will begin her first day at Children's Village Daycare Center in Chinatown. That's one down. Only 49 left to go.