JUVENILE CENTER SITE SELECTED

An eight-acre tract of land situated in an industrial area of Cape Girardeau has been selected as the site for a new county juvenile justice center.

The Cape Girardeau County Commission announced Tuesday that land at the south intersection of Progress and Enterprise streets had been chosen for the center, which would house juvenile criminal offenders from Cape Girardeau and surrounding counties. The commission has been considering the site for months.

The commission and the Southeast Missouri State University Foundation, which owns the land, signed a contract for its sale. The purchase price was not released, and the agreement is dependent on "the completion of specific terms and several contingencies," a press release said.

Those contingencies involve a special-use permit or zoning change to operate the center, said Wayne Davenport, executive director of the University Foundation and vice president for university advancement at Southeast.

The county would have to apply for a special-use permit from the city's Planning and Zoning Commission because the juvenile center would operate as a public building. No application for the permit has been made yet, but the deadline for consideration at next month's meeting is March 29.

The land currently is zoned M-1, light industrial, show city planning department records.

The county has been looking for nearly two years for a suitable site to build the center, which is estimated to cost between $2.5 million and $3 million.

Since the center would serve 12- to 17-year-old offenders from Cape Girardeau, Bollinger and Perry counties, the commission has been trying to find a site close to Interstate 55. But the commission also wanted to build within the Cape Girardeau city limits because a majority of the offenders come from the city.

Mayor Al Spradling III said, "Since we probably produce more offenders than the rest of the county, keeping it in Cape will make it easier for our officers to transport" the youths, thus making it a more cost-efficient operation.

The city council adopted a resolution in November supporting the commission's decision to build in the city. There are other obvious benefits to the city like construction revenue and jobs the project might create, the mayor said.

Tentative plans for the building include a detention area, juvenile court and offices for department employees. Plans also call for 24 cells with room for 40, if needed.

An existing center houses eight beds and sits on a two-acre tract in the middle of a downtown residential neighborhood at 325 Merriwether St.

The new center wouldn't look like a jail for juveniles but more like an office building, juvenile officials have said.

Some city residents have been upset at some of the sites that were under consideration. Many people felt that the center shouldn't be built anywhere near a residential neighborhood.

The proposed site is "not in a neighborhood but in a commercially oriented site, so that should satisfy a certain population," Spradling said.

There are probably some who would still oppose the location, but it is not near a school and it meets the needs of the county, he said.

"While I think a juvenile center is safe and wouldn't mind it across the creek, there are those that have those concerns," Spradling said, referring to a suggested site near his home.

In 1998, a nearly 10-acre site was chosen in the 2100 block of Locust Street, also in an industrial area of the city. The county requested a special-use permit from the city's Planning and Zoning Commission but the deal fell apart.

Last fall the county looked at an 11-acre site on Clark Avenue between the Christian School for the Young Years and the Cape Girardeau Senior Center. That site, because it sits in a floodplain, only would have had five acres suitable for building.

Opposition from neighbors and people who didn't want the center in a residential area essentially eliminated that site from the county's list.

Randy Rhodes, chief juvenile officer for the 32nd Judicial Circuit, said he didn't want a site that would have caused controversy.

Spradling said, "The county has been addressing that and trying to find a location compatible for the neighborhood. I think they've done that."

The land owned by the University Foundation was donated to the foundation by Ken Hastings, a former Cape Girardeau businessman who now lives out of state.

The university never intended to develop the site for its own use. If all conditions of the agreement are met and the sale finalized, the university will use the proceeds of the sale to create an endowment. The endowment for the College of Business would be used for faculty development, as per Hastings' request, said Davenport.