It took less than two weeks for 60 children to fill the Valley Opportunity Council’s newly rebuilt early childcare center after it opened in late August.

“The demand for slots is overwhelming,” said Stephen C. Huntley, executive director for the Valley Opportunity Center. Since the center opened on Aug. 22, parents transferred 14 children from other Valley Opportunity Council locations and another 46 enrolled their children in the open slots.

The Valley Opportunity Council initially purchased the building at 374 Montgomery St. from STEPS Development Day Care Center a decade ago. But the center, which was originally a dental office, was not well designed for a day care center, Huntley said.

The 3,000-square-foot center did not have enough room to meet the demand and it was laid out inefficiently for a preschool. A 2011 study of the center by the state Department of Early Education and Care found the deficiencies affected the quality of teaching and learning, he said.

Valley Opportunity Council wanted to rebuild to make a larger and better-designed center, but did not have a way to pay for the project, Huntley said.

“This project has been lingering for a long time and then we received $1 million from the state and that was the tipping point,” he said.

Using the grant, combined with federal Community Development Block Grant money from the city and a Chicopee Savings Bank loan, the Valley Opportunity Council razed the existing building and constructed a new 5,200-square-foot, $1.6 million building designed for young children, Huntley said.

The new building has four classrooms and a large outdoor playground. It accepts preschool children from ages 2 years, 9 months to 5 and also has an after-school program for 26 children in kindergarten through grade four, Huntley said.

The school is considered a “mixed delivery system” that combines children of low-income parents who have vouchers to attend and those of parents who pay tuition, Huntley said.

The day care closed last year on Labor Day for the yearlong construction project. A total of 14 children were transferred to other Valley Opportunity Council preschools, but the majority were heading to kindergarten, so it was a good time to close the center temporarily, he said.

The Valley Opportunity also runs preschools at its headquarters on Mount Carmel Avenue, at Cabot Manor in Chicopee. In Holyoke it has schools in Beaudoin Village, at Churchill Homes and operates two preschool classrooms in the Lt. Clayre Sullivan and Morgan schools.

The Valley Opportunity Council will hold a grand opening of the new center on Friday. Expected to attend are Mayor Richard Kos; Thomas Weber, the commissioner of the Massachusetts Department of Early Education and Care; Michael Knapik, a representative of Gov. Charlie Baker’s Springfield office; and local lawmakers.

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