Celebree School franchisee to open second area location near Willow Lawn

5300 W. Marshall St. will soon be home to the Celebree School of Richmond. (Jackie DiBartolomeo photo)

Class will soon be in session in an old church building near Willow Lawn, as the local franchisee of an Innsbrook-area preschool and daycare provider is opening a new location.

Vakul Goel, the owner of Celebree School of Henrico, recently inked a lease for the 9,000-square-foot building at at 5300 W. Marshall St., which he’ll transform into Celebree School of Richmond early next year. 

Celebree offers daycare, preschool and summer programs for children 6  weeks to 12 years old. The Maryland-based national franchise was founded in 1994 and currently has about 70 locations listed on its website as open or soon-to-be open, many of which are in Maryland, Virginia and Pennsylvania. 

Goel brought Celebree to the Richmond area back in 2022, when he opened his first location across 10,000 square feet at 3641 Cox Road in the Shoppes at Twin Oaks shopping center.

A mockup for the planned Celebree School. (Courtesy Vakul Goel)

He signed on to a five-school franchise agreement with Celebree and said Tuesday that the Willow Lawn area appealed to him as a place that could use Celebree’s services.

“Expansion was definitely on my mind when we opened Celebree. I have licenses to open multiple schools within the Richmond micro-area,” Goel said. “When we started looking at the locations, I felt Willow Lawn didn’t carry any national childcare centers. There are some smaller centers, but nothing as big as what we want to offer.” 

Vakul Goel

The lease on the HOPE Christian Ministries building on West Marshall was signed earlier this year, Goel said, and design work is now finished. He said Celebree is waiting for final permitting to be approved, with plans to start construction next month. 

The new school will have 10 classrooms (the same number as the Cox Road location) and two new playgrounds.

Goel said after construction gets underway, he hopes to open the new school around early to mid-spring of 2026. 

The project architect is Reston-based Architecture Inc., which worked on the Cox Road school. The general contractor is locally based Riverstone.

Goel said buildout for the school will cost around $3 million, noting that’s the typical price tag for a Celebree school project. 

The Willow Lawn location plans to have up to 165 students and around 35 staff members, similar in size to the Henrico school.

And with a second location underway, Goel said he hopes to expedite the process for more, noting he hopes to open a third Celebree within two years of the Willow Lawn location’s opening. 

Plans for the Celebree School at 5300 W. Marshall St. (Courtesy Vakul Goel)

Though no other specific sites have been decided upon, growing areas like Bon Air, Hanover and Midlothian are of particular interest to Celebree, he said.

Goel, who previously worked in IT and account management, will split his time between the two schools when his second Celebree location opens. He told BizSense he’s excited to bring the Celebree community to a host of different families in the area with the location. 

“When a child walks in and says, ‘Hi Mr. Vakul, how are you doing?’ and gives me a high-five … that’s when my day’s extremely successful,” Goel said. 

Celebree launched its franchise program in 2019, and opened the first franchise location in Maryland a couple years later.

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