Plans for the state to build a secure youth treatment facility are up in the air after officials withdrew a proposal in Vergennes, Vt., according to the Vermont Department for Children and Families.

The news came a day after state leaders informed advocates for justice-involved youth and other stakeholders that Vermont would consider a variety of options in its effort to build a new facility, five years after the closure of the scandal-plagued Woodside Juvenile Rehabilitation Center.

In a statement, Aryka Radke, deputy commissioner of the Vermont Department for Children and Families, said the state’s withdrawal of the Vergennes plan signaled a “shift in strategy based on project urgency” and zoning struggles. The state is open to “all viable options — whether within Vergennes or elsewhere,” in building a new secure youth facility, according to Radke.

Compared to the scrapped Vergennes plan, the state will explore sites with fewer regulatory hurdles, she said, adding that leaders were confident they could transition the completed planning and development work to a new location.

In 2024, the state announced plans to build what it called the Green Mountain Youth Campus. Department for Children and Families leaders have said Vermont’s lack of a “secure facility for youth in crisis” has strained the state’s ability to care for juveniles, prompting the plans for the 14-bed project in Vergennes.

The program is intended as a more therapeutic successor to Woodside but has faced uncertainty along the way. At one point, the state considered increasing the size of the facility to house 18 and 19-year-olds in the criminal justice system, but ultimately scrapped that idea earlier this year. Throughout the process — and again with Tuesday’s news — stakeholders have said they feel unheard.

The state had enlisted Sentinel Group, a for-profit organization, to help design the Vergennes location. The same company runs the temporary Red Clover Treatment Center in Middlesex, and its leader is connected to the nonprofit Vermont Permanency Initiative, which runs residential programs for youth in Bennington. Sentinel has received more than $10 million from the state for its work.

Now, the Vergennes plans are “on hold” and the state is “taking a step back” while trying to figure out what to do next, Cole Barney, a Department of Buildings and General Services spokesperson, said Tuesday.

Officials are currently unsure where the new facility will be located or if there are other plans in store for the plot of land in Vergennes, he said. And while he said he appreciated Vergennes’ consideration, “a lot of not in our backyard advocacy” stood in the way.

The state considered a spot in South Burlington in 2024 before moving forward in Vergennes — now they might consider that location again, Barney said.

Matthew Bernstein, Vermont’s Child, Youth and Family Advocate, said his office has felt left out during the planning process for the facility.

“We don’t feel like DCF has been listening to the messages from children, youth and families and that’s a huge reason why this project failed in Vergennes,” he said.

Bernstein said the state tried to “tack on” stakeholder input to check a box, rather than involving advocates and community members at the ground level.

He took issue with the design of the facility, which he suggested was conceived around the needs and wants of the department and those who will staff the program, rather than the needs of children who will be held there.

As proposed, Bernstein said, the facility seemed to be “an incredible misuse of state funds.”

Decreasing the number of children who need to be in a secure facility starts with investing in communities — and the state will have to listen to advocates if they want to get it right, he said.

In an interview Monday, Mark Koenig, the chair of a Vergennes committee negotiating with the state about the facility, said the city received a short email from Buildings and General Services Commissioner Wanda Minoli earlier this month “withdrawing” the state’s request for a zoning waiver to build the youth campus.

But that zoning waiver, Koenig said, “wasn’t actually a legitimate request in the first place.”

To Koenig, the state’s decision to pull its request is just the most recent episode in a dysfunctional process.