Work is progressing slowly on Adams County’s $2.7 million juvenile justice center at the corner of State and Pearl streets.

Amelia Salmon, an architect who is working on the project for the Adams County Board of Supervisors, said the project will not be completed until January at the earliest.

And &uot;that still is a fairly optimistic schedule,&uot; Salmon said.

Supervisors awarded construction of the project in June 1999 to Harold West Contractors Inc. of Laurel.

County officials broke ground on the center last August, and the project’s original 14-month timeline placed its completion in September 2000.

But Supervisor Sammy Cauthen said he realizes the county cannot do much about the delays but deal with them. &uot;We really don’t have much choice. That’s just the way it is,&uot; said Cauthen, who is disappointed about the delays. &uot;The longer it takes, the longer we have to make other arrangements.&uot;

Because Adams County does not have a juvenile justice center, county officials hold juvenile inmates at the county jail. The county also leases a downtown building across from the jail to hold youth court until the new center opens, Cauthen said. The new center will be able to hold about 20 juvenile inmates plus courtroom and classroom space.

Salmon said the center is behind schedule in part because work has progressed slowly but also because of some other problems found at the site. The contractor had to fill several cisterns workers found on the property and had to deal with some asbestos tile they found encased in concrete, Salmon said. A few days of bad weather also slowed the work, she said.

&uot;It’s not unusual for construction projects to be delayed for various reasons,&uot; Salmon said.

Supervisors first developed a plan for building a juvenile detention center in summer 1993 and selected the site in April 1996.

The law requires counties to keep juvenile inmates separate by sight and sound from adult inmates.