Little Sunshine’s secures $50M investment

Plano, Texas-based Buttry & Brown Development LLC plans to invest $50 million to build preschools for Little Sunshine’s Enterprises Inc.

Brett Roubal, president of Springfield-based Little Sunshine’s, said the company would lease the new preschools from Buttry & Brown upon completion.

“They handle really all development aspects of the project from site selection to handling hiring of the contracts, all the due diligence, to completion of the project, and hand us over a turnkey building,” Roubal said.

Part of plans to expand nationally, he said the locations will be announced over the next few months.

Buttry & Brown already has invested about $65 million to build 14 Little Sunshine’s preschools, including a location in O’Fallon, officials say. Rouball said Little Sunshine’s has 23 preschools open across the country.

“While we do have plans to develop internally as well, this allows us the extra capital and expertise to do more than we could otherwise do ourselves,” he said of the Buttry & Brown deal. “We’re in the process of filling up our pipeline as we speak.”

Earlier this year, Little Sunshine’s won its category for Springfield Business Journal’s Economic Impact Awards. The early childhood education provider reported 2018 revenue of $5.4 million locally and $36 million companywide.