HANDLE JUVENILE-CENTER LOCATION WITH CARE

With 64 percent of the juveniles assigned to the Cape Girardeau County Juvenile Center coming from Cape Girardeau last year, it makes good sense to build a new center in Cape Girardeau.

That is what the Cape Girardeau County Commission would like to do if it can find a suitable site acceptable to everyone concerned.

The commission ran head-on into opposition with its first site selection: an 11-acre tract on Clark Street between the Cape Girardeau Senior Center and the Christian School for the Young Years. When news of the possible purchase of the land from the Notre Dame High School Booster Club came out, opposition rang out from residents of that part of town. The commission subsequently abandoned the idea of building on the Clark Street property.

If the center is to be built in Cape Girardeau, the commission must accept the fact that neighborhood opposition is a key concern. That is because the county must obtain a special-use permit from the city before it can build a juvenile justice center within the city limits.

Now the commission is considering other sites, and Presiding Commissioner Gerald Jones says it won't publicly discuss any of those sites for fear it would generate neighborhood opposition.

The existing juvenile detention center at 325 Merriwether sits on two acres in the middle of a downtown residential neighborhood, and it hasn't posed any problems in that neighborhood. The Clark Street site in all probability wouldn't pose any threat. It simply was not the best site because of the nearby school and senior center.

The commission may be wise in keeping potential sites for the center to itself early on, but sooner or later the site will be made public as it should be and that will be long before the city has the opportunity to grant or deny a special-use permit, allowing plenty of time for pro-and-con discussions.

It would be far better for the commission to thoroughly investigate the site it finally chooses in order to determine if there would be opposition and the extent of any opposition. Armed with that knowledge, it could proceed with the approval process and purchase of land, and build a center in Cape Girardeau that would serve this judicial circuit for many years.