News-Record.com

Presuming the Council of State decides to take a 20-acre gift from Rockingham County during its meeting tomorrow, the N.C. Department of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention will build a Youth Development Center in Wentworth.

Guilford County had been a candidate for the center (and the jobs that come along with it), but neighbors objected. This is from a Jan. 20, 2007 a colleague wrote out of a Guilford County Board of Commissioners meeting:

GREENSBORO - Sandy Camp Road residents made a last-ditch, late-night plea to block the state from building a juvenile jail in their neighborhood.

They won.

Guilford County commissioners on Thursday overwhelmingly turned away the state's permit request for the 32-bed youth prison in the area. Commissioners worried that the jail would hurt property values and lacked enough security to prevent convicted teenagers from breaking loose and terrorizing neighbors.

"We were absolutely humbled by it," said Larry Rayle, a lifelong resident of the area. "This is the first group of people in a year that really sat down and listened to us and discounted what the state was presenting."

Residents have been fighting the state since it revealed plans for the center more than a year ago. Juvenile justice officials promised that the building would look like an elementary school with trees out front along Sandy Camp Road .

The state easily won over the county planning board. But the commissioners, who can be more easily influenced by passionate pleas from voters, said the state failed to meet guidelines for granting the request.

"The surrounding property is all residential," Republican Billy Yow said. "There's not one commercial application out there."

Commissioners said they hoped the state would still build the center in the county. One suggestion has been the county prison farm in Gibsonville, though Chairman Paul Gibson, a Democrat, suggested putting it in an industrial park away from homes.

"It doesn't need to be there in a residential area that's growing," Gibson said.

Kim Yonkers, a spokeswoman for the juvenile-justice department, said only that the state would "evaluate the situation and make a decision on where to go next." The department plans to build five youth prisons across the state as it takes a more community-oriented approach to jailing its youth .