The new juvenile rehabilitation centre on Fairbanks Road will cost an estimated $8million to build, and is expected to open in April 2013 after projected groundbreaking early next year.

Costs, revealed for the first time, to build the 34-bed, 28,600 square foot Youth Rehabilitation Centre on the 30.5-acre Fairbanks Road site of the George Town trailer park and women’s prison, were published by the Central Planning Authority, which has approved the development nearly five months after plans were announced.

Minister of Community Affairs, Gender and Housing Mike Adam told iNews yesterday he would elaborate on the plans at Tuesday’s Mary Miller Hall public meeting, but said the new centre would accommodate youth from Northward Prison’s Eagle House, women at neighbouring Fairbanks and overspill from West Bay’s Bonaventure Boys Home, which also would take Fairbanks inmates, “depending on the scale of the problem”, turning it into a co-ed institution.

The long-term plan, Mr Adam hinted, was to close Fairbanks.

Already, he said, half of the approximate $8 million construction costs for the Youth Rehabilitation Centre had been allocated from government’s capital construction budget, while the balance would be assigned in the 2012/13 budget.

The purpose-built facility, green-lighted over a series of objections from neighbouring Fern Circle residents, citing traffic, inadequate infrastructure and fears of local flooding, will be surrounded by a 15-foot security fence and include two basketball half-courts, a soccer field and a 400-gallon fuel tank.

The rehabilitation unit will provide 24-hour residential care and education for under-17 youth, too disruptive for public school and who have tested the limits of the Adult Education Centre (AEC) or court-ordered attendance at Bonaventure Boys Home.

Bearing in mind the gang violence of the last three weeks involving former AEC students, Mr Adam said he was ”pushing for construction to start in early January because we have some gaps here.

“We are trying to finish the official stuff now, and go out to tender in mid-December, and hope it will be finalised in, say, late December so we can get permits,” he said.

Staff, which he “guesstimated” at “a dozen-ish “ would be drawn from a variety of sources, some from Bonaventure – already using the rehab centre’s “Missouri method” of delinquent care – and some from the Francis Bodden girl’s home. Others will be freshly recruited.

Dormitories, dubbed “cottages”, will house up to 12 students each. Two will accommodate court-ordered stays, while another 10 “students” will “be in a secure facility for those that have been incarcerated” in Eagle House or Northward.

“The drawings also provide for two more cottages if needed,” Mr Adam said.

Meanwhile, anticipating the arrival of Fairbanks women, Bonaventure will erect a new building “for better facilities and programmes,” he said.