NEW JUVENILE CENTER SITE PROPOSED

The Cape Girardeau County Commission wants to buy an 11-acre site in Cape Girardeau for a new juvenile justice center.

The site on Clark Street is a vacant tract sandwiched between the Cape Girardeau Senior Center and the Christian School for the Young Years. The Notre Dame High School booster club owns the property.

"We have made an offer to Notre Dame. They have not responded as yet," Presiding Commissioner Gerald Jones said Monday.

The county could only build on five acres of the site. The other six acres are in a flood plain, Jones said. The property backs onto Walker Creek.

The county would have to obtain a special-use permit from the Cape Girardeau City Council before it could build the juvenile center. To do so, county officials would have to present their plans to the city's Planning and Zoning Commission at a public hearing.

The Cape Girardeau County Commission wants to build a new juvenile justice center to house a detention area, juvenile court, juvenile department employees and several classrooms. Plans call for the center to have 24 cells with room for expansion to 40 if needed in the future.

The center would house offenders ages 12 through 17 from the state's 32nd Judicial Circuit, which encompasses Cape Girardeau, Perry and Bollinger counties.

Jones estimated last November that the project could cost $2.5 million to $3 million. At the time, the county had a contract with property owners James and Amy Stovall for a 10-acre tract in the 2100 block of Locust Street, a largely industrial area of the city off South Kingshighway. But the deal never went through.

"It doesn't look like anything is going to happen," said Jones. "We haven't been able to get all the contingencies fulfilled."

Engineering site tests uncovered soil compaction problems.

Randy Rhodes, the chief juvenile officer for the circuit, said the proposed juvenile center has to be built on solid ground. The one-story center would be constructed of fabricated steel and poured concrete. "It is very heavy," he said.

Both Jones and Rhodes said the Clark Street site shouldn't pose a problem for neighbors.

Jones said the structure would look like an office building rather than a prison. "It is going to be very community friendly."

Jones said delinquent juveniles won't be running through the neighborhood.

The presiding commissioner said there isn't any reason to be alarmed.

"My God, we are putting a prison right here in the middle of downtown Jackson for mean guys," Jones said of the county jail. "Why would somebody in Cape be concerned about a place that would keep 20 juveniles?"

Mayor Al Spradling III lives in a residential area a short distance across the creek from the proposed juvenile-center site. "I can't see it being a negative at all," Spradling said. "I don't have any problems with the site."

Traffic congestion is a problem at Clark and Broadway, only a few blocks from the proposed site. But Spradling said the city plans to install a signal at that intersection within the next two years. That should alleviate any traffic tie-ups, the mayor said.

Jones and Spradling want the center to be built in Cape Girardeau, where the bulk of the delinquent juveniles are from.

"I have been trying and trying to keep the juvenile center in Cape Girardeau for the benefit of Cape Girardeau," said Jones. "I am having terrible luck at finding a location, and it is getting frustrating," the presiding commissioner said.

Rhodes said the public views juvenile centers as prisons. "They want us to build it. They don't want it in their backyard," said Rhodes.

Jones said the county needs a new juvenile center. The existing eight-bed detention center at 325 Merriwether in Cape Girardeau was built in the early 1970s. It sits on a two-acre site in the middle of a downtown residential area. There's no room for expansion.

"We've got to move," Jones said. "We will find a site that we will be welcome to, preferably in Cape. If we can't, we will find it elsewhere."

Rhodes said he wants a site that won't spark public opposition and would allow for expansion.

There shouldn't be any safety problems wherever the center is built, said Rhodes. The existing center hasn't posed any problem, he said.

Spradling said a new center would be even better from a security standpoint.

The proposed classrooms for the center also could be used by the city's police and fire departments for training, he said.

Spradling said the city had offered to share in the cost of street, sewer and work improvements needed for the Locust Street site when that land was considered for the juvenile center.

The city would make similar arrangements for the Clark Street site should the county built the center there, the mayor said.