An article in yesterday's editions incorrectly implied that Hillen Tire, a business on the proposed site of a new state juvenile justice center, has closed. The company is still operating on the property at Hillen and Front streets. If officials go forward with the center at that site, construction likely will not begin until at least late 1997.
The Sun regrets the errors.
City and state officials believe they now have a site for a long-awaited juvenile justice center in East Baltimore that will be acceptable to the community and provide jobs for local residents.
FOR THE RECORD - CORRECTION
The $42 million justice center has come close to reality several times before, only to be scuttled by neighborhood opposition.
The new site, at the former Hillen Tire in East Baltimore, is across Hillen Street from a 5.4-acre parking lot that officials proposed in February to be the center's home. That site fell through when the owners did not want to sell and because of community concerns. Before that, the state eyed a location on Cold Spring Lane just west of the Jones Falls Expressway and another on Wabash Avenue.
Some East Baltimore residents balked at the announcement last year, saying they did not want another correctional facility in their midst. The Baltimore City Detention Center, Maryland Penitentiary and several other prisons are just blocks away.
But Stuart O. Simms, secretary of the state Department of Juvenile Justice, said Friday that he had promised to help community residents get some portion of the jobs the center would create, and to try to get local contractors to help build it. He also said he was working with Gov. Parris N. Glendening to get money to improve playgrounds and basketball courts in the neighborhood.
Baltimore had to act soon or risk losing state money to build the center, said Del. Howard "Pete" Rawlings, a Baltimore Democrat who heads the House Appropriations Committee.
He said he had warned city leaders to settle on a site because it would be difficult to continue to reserve money at a time when numerous other counties are clamoring for state aid for construction projects.
Baltimore has no detention beds for juveniles. The Cheltenham Youth Facility, where most of Baltimore's youths are sent, is more than an hour away and packed with about 250 youths in buildings designed to hold 167.
City Juvenile Court takes place in the Clarence M. Mitchell Jr. Courthouse, where lawyers, victims, defendants and parents are crowded into a small, dark hallway to wait for hearings.
