Correction: The planned Central Arkansas Veterans Home in North Little Rock will be a long-term care facility. This story incorrectly identified the type of facility it will be.
More than three years after Arkansas veterans rallied at the state Capitol and called for a new state-run veterans home, their plea is being fulfilled.
Workers have prepared the site and will soon begin erecting structures for the Central Arkansas Veterans Home, a $24 million assisted-living complex of eight 10,000-square-foot residences that together will house 96 veterans and eligible dependents.
Lawmakers started making plans for a new veterans home in 2012, after they learned that the Little Rock Veterans Home had deteriorated to the point of being uninhabitable and that the cost to renovate it was estimated at $10 million. That home, located since 1980 in a long-closed school for the blind on Charles Bussey Avenue, was closed in June 2012.
Veterans criticized state leaders for letting the home fall into disrepair and asked that it be replaced.
The new complex will be the second state-run veterans home in Arkansas. The Fayetteville Veterans Home is located in an annex and the top two floors of the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences' Northwest Arkansas campus.
The Central Arkansas Veterans Home is being built with $7.5 million in state funds and a $15.6 million grant from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. The remaining amount, about $900,000, was collected through donations to the Arkansas Department of Veterans Affairs.
The complex is being built on a 31-acre site in North Little Rock on what used to be Emerald Park Golf Course.
According to floor plans from Polk Stanley Wilcox Architects and architecture firm Perkins Eastman, each of the eight residences will include individual rooms and restrooms for 12 people, as well as a den, office, kitchen, garage, wraparound porch and dining and living rooms.
Space is available for construction of four more residences to house 48 more veterans, if needed.
The design also includes a 16,000-square-foot community building that will house a chapel, salon, physical therapy room, meeting space and administrative offices.
"The intent really is to try to get these people out of a sort of a hospital or nursing home environment and into more of a residential-type facility, where they're helping with their own food preparation and are more engaged with the staff and day-to-day goings-on in the house," said Jim Thacker, a construction administrator with Polk Stanley Wilcox.
Workers with Craig Custom Construction first went out to the site June 29, days after the contractor signed a $19.1 million contract with the state VA.
General contractor Steve Craig said his workers cut through 300 yards of trees to create an entry road at the intersection of Fendley Drive and John Ashley Drive. On Friday, workers drove road rollers, compacting the earth where the community building and eight residences, or "cottages," will be built.
"The construction gods, so far, are smiling," Craig said.
Standing on the spot where the first cottage will be built -- which had been part of the golf course driving range -- Craig pointed toward a reservoir just west of the construction site.
"You're looking out over the water. It's just gorgeous," Craig said. "It's going to be a really cool setting."
A veterans home task force created by the Legislature chose the North Little Rock location from a pool of 20 proposed sites across the state. The site's proximity to the Eugene J. Towbin Healthcare Center, a VA hospital, went into the decision. Another strong point was its location in central Arkansas, where many of the state's veterans reside.
Lane Bailey, deputy director of the Arkansas Department of Veterans Affairs, said veterans have inquired about living in the facility since the process to build it first started. Veterans have filled out questionnaires asking for basic information such as age, marital status and percent of disability.
Bailey said veterans and eligible dependents would be able to live in the complex, but a criteria for dependents has not yet been created.
At a groundbreaking ceremony Wednesday, Gov. Asa Hutchinson recognized state Sen. Jane English, R-North Little Rock, and former state Rep. John Edwards, D-Little Rock, who both introduced legislation in 2013 to advance the building of the new veterans home.
"This occasion is important for our state," Hutchinson said. "It is a tangible, concrete step that our state is taking for our veterans."
Matt Snead, director of the Arkansas Department of Veterans Affairs, said the agency will go to Hutchinson in mid-September with proposals for managing the home. During the next month, the state agency will establish the home's business plan, with input from veterans organizations.
"This is a dream come true for a lot of people in Arkansas," Bailey said. "This is not just our project -- the veterans community as a whole has been involved with this and will continue to be."
Metro on 07/30/2015