The state is ending plans to bring a youth detention center to North Baltimore, to the relief of neighbors who had strongly opposed its placement in a residential area.

In 2023, the Department of Juvenile Services began calling for a locked 24-bed residential treatment center for young men in the Woodbourne-McCabe neighborhood.

The Maryland General Assembly required the department to submit a report this month, and it says “continued opposition” from the community and elected officials informed the decision to call off the plan.

“The community won this one,” said Phyllis Gilmore, president of the Woodbourne-McCabe Neighborhood Association.

The three-story brick building on Woodbourne Avenue that was to become a secure treatment facility is currently the Maryland Youth Residence Center, which houses an alternative to detention programs.

Participants are transported there after school, fed dinner, helped with homework and given opportunities to participate in other enrichment activities before heading home

Only a sign outside indicates that it is a juvenile services building — there’s no fencing or obvious security measures. It was once a transitional group home for boys, but by 2008, residential use was suspended due to a lack of a fire system.

Most of the state’s secure treatment centers for young people are in Western Maryland, and former DJS Secretary Vincent Schiraldi pressed for young people to remain closer to their homes.

In fiscal year 2024, Baltimore made up the largest percentage of placements in the Department of Juvenile Services’ treatment centers, which are open to young people statewide.

Schiraldi said staying local and drawing on community-based partnerships is a research-proven approach for better outcomes for public safety and for rehabilitating young people who get in trouble with the law.

To follow that approach, Schiraldi advocated for converting the Woodbourne Avenue building.

Treatment there would have been modeled after the state’s Victor Cullen Center in Frederick County.

But Schiraldi resigned in June, and acting DJS Secretary Betsy Fox Tolentino has not aggressively advocated for the North Baltimore project.

Meanwhile, the juvenile services department was required to submit a report to the state legislature explaining how the agency would use the property, detailing the agency’s engagement efforts with residents and elected officials and providing an update about the project’s overall status.

Included in that new report are letters from Dels. Regina Boyce and Elizabeth Embry that express concerns that the department did not accurately note the community’s opposition in an earlier report.

The General Assembly appropriated more than $2.5 million between fiscal year 2025 and fiscal year 2026 to convert the Woodbourne Avenue building. The total cost for the project was anticipated to be a little over $46 million.

Residents weren’t worried about the cost; they focused on how a secure treatment facility — ringed by a 14-foot fence — could change perceptions about their neighborhood.

Joe Nathan Page said introducing a jail-like facility would stifle Woodbourne-McCabe’s progress.

Page, 86, has lived in the neighborhood for six decades and said city and state leaders should think more proactively about how the state handles young people who break the law.

“We’re going to have to find a way to get to the root of the problem,” Page said

Gilmore, the neighborhood association head, thinks the state’s change of plans could open conversations about what else the building could be used for, including, she hopes, a community center.

The neighborhood association is focused on improving the area, Gilmore said.

Last year, residents welcomed a new playground, named in Gilmore’s honor, and in previous years, Habitat for Humanity of the Chesapeake rehabilitated strips of vacant homes.