The buyer who purchased formerly village-owned apartment buildings earlier this year will convert one of them to a day care.
    Landen Lawless said he made the move partially because the day care his children attend is closing at what would have been the end of the school year.
    In November, Lawless bought three duplexes, each containing two apartments, for $60,000. It was the Village Board’s second attempt to sell the property.
    “In April, basically we received a letter from [local day care owner] Lindsay Anderson saying that she was going to be done at the end of the school year,” Lawless said. “We just kind of put it off for a while, but then I got to thinking, what am I going to do when my wife has to go back to work, because she works at the school? Day care is so hard to find anyway, and there seems to be a need for it in this area.”
    Lawless himself has a 2-year-old son and a daughter in fourth grade. The day care, which will be called SWNE Daycare Center, will have room for up to 12 children.
    One of the buildings Lawless bought has two one-bedroom units and proved hard to rent because they were small.
    He decided to convert one of the duplexes into a single two-bedroom, two-bath space. That involved knocking down some walls and taking out one of the kitchens, he said.

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