Except for two people who voiced concerns about neighborhood safety, Nez Perce County residents enthusiastically showed support for a proposed juvenile corrections work center during a public meeting Monday night.

Lewiston is one of two finalists for a northern Idaho center planned by the state Department of Juvenile Corrections.

Department officials came to Lewiston Monday to gauge public sentiment for the project. Today they will be in Coeur d’Alene, the other finalist, to do the same.

“This place is about the best place in the world to have it,” state Sen. Bruce Sweeney of Lewiston told Michael Johnson, director of juvenile corrections.

“It’s a slam dunk for Lewiston,” added Gary Picone, Lewis-Clark State College athletic director.

Johnson told the gathering of about 50 that the work center would house up to 50 male juveniles ages 14 to 17. The youths would attend school at the center and work in the community.

He said the work component is an integral part of his department’s new philosophy of accountability in which offenders repay the community for their crimes.

Forty people would be employed at the center.

Two new centers are being built in Idaho to help keep children in detention near their homes. Parental involvement is important to the children’s success, Johnson said.

The one existing center in St. Anthony cannot meet all the state’s needs, he added. As many as 50 Idaho kids each year are sent out of state, as far away as Texas.

In Nez Perce County, the proposed site for the center is at the Southport Business Park near the airport and Blount, Inc.

There would be no fences surrounding the site, but Johnson and other officials assured the center would be “staff-secured.”

That didn’t ease the worry of Charmaine Allen, who lives adjacent to the site.

“My home would be the first to be hit (if someone escaped),” she said. “I’m not convinced it’s a safe investment without secure fencing so if an attempted escape is made, it can be stopped before it gets too far.”

“I’m the No. 2 house that would be hit,” said another woman, who did not identify herself. She said she doesn’t want to come home and “find one hiding in the barn.”

The area southwest of Lewiston has quite a few residents and is developing, she said, and asked if any other locations were considered.

Of the seven sites that were looked at in and around Lewiston, Southport was the best for public safety, she was told. There’s a bluff on one side, a draw on another and Blount, with its 1,200-foot buffer zone, is on a third side.

Officials said there was only one escape last year from St. Anthony, which also is staff-secured.

Johnson also said offenders would be screened and the most dangerous would not be placed at the center.

Lewiston Police Lt. Tom Lee pointed out kids already run away by the score from Northwest Children’s Home, which is in a Lewiston residential neighborhood, and implied there have been no serious problems.

“If I had $1 for every kid that ran away from Northwest Children’s Home, I could probably retire,” he said.

If the work center is run like St. Anthony, there will be no problem here either, Lee said.

Both he and Nez Perce County sheriff’s Deputy Scot Gleason pledged support from their departments.

At the urging of Nez Perce County Commission Chairman Earl Ferguson, several members of the audience also offered support for the center. They included representatives from the National Park Service, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the city of Lewiston, the Lewiston Chamber of Commerce, Potlatch Corp., Northwest Children’s Home, Washington Water Power, Salvation Army, Interlink, Lewiston School District, Nez Perce Tribe, plus Magistrate Carl Kerrick, Deputy Prosecutor Lynnette Ehler, state Rep. Frank Bruneel and several private citizens.

Johnson and the other officials also were reminded there are direct flights daily from Lewiston to Boise, not available from Coeur d’Alene, and that the golf here is year-round.

Both comments drew chuckles from the crowd.

The outpour of support “astounds me,” Johnson said as the meeting closed. “I’m very impressed.”

A decision will be made on where to locate the center in about a week. Construction is estimated to take one year.