U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs Secretary Robert McDonald has approved transferring approximately 30 acres to the state to build a new veterans nursing home in North Little Rock.
McDonald's signature ensures that the Arkansas Department of Veterans Affairs will receive a $15.6 million grant from the federal VA, allowing the state agency to meet its plan to start construction on the facility this summer.
After a delay last fall with an environmental assessment of the land, officials at the state agency and Arkansas' congressional delegation were unsure whether the grant would come through. Matt Snead, appointed in February as the director of the state Department of Veterans Affairs, said the agency was "at risk of losing federal funding."
"We were on pins and needles there for a while," Snead said Wednesday. "We are where we want to be now, and we can maintain our timeline."
The new Central Arkansas Veterans Home will replace the Little Rock Veterans Home, which closed in 2012 after it was discovered that the building was in disrepair and would cost about $10 million to fix.
The federal VA placed the project on its priority list for fiscal 2014 and announced last March that it would pay for 65 percent of the costs. Arkansas lawmakers budgeted $7.5 million in state surplus funds for the state's share, and the state Department of Veterans Affairs has raised another $900,000.
The facility will have eight residences for housing a total of 96 veterans. It will be built on 31 acres near the Eugene J. Towbin Healthcare Center, formerly Fort Roots, on what was once part of Emerald Park Golf Course.
The land transfer, approved Tuesday, takes the acreage from the Central Arkansas Veterans Healthcare System.
Snead said the state department can now move forward with awarding a contract to Craig Custom Construction, a Little Rock-based company that submitted in February the apparent low bid of $19,104,443 on the project. That is about $200,000 less than the agency had estimated for construction costs.
The land will officially transfer to the state after a 90-day congressional review, Snead said. "Then the federal money can start flowing."
Earlier this month, U.S. Sens. John Boozman and Tom Cotton and U.S. Rep. French Hill sent a letter to McDonald asking that the grant money be allocated to the project, even with the delay in the environmental assessment.
The delay pushed the project off schedule. The land transfer should have been approved and the 90-day waiting period concluded before a March 29 deadline.
"We request that you work to ensure that these funds are provided soon in order to assist our aging and disabled veterans who will rely on this new facility for essential services and housing," the letter states. "Arkansas is in need of the new facility in North Little Rock to better serve our veterans."
At a January meeting of the Arkansas Veterans Commission, which oversees the state Department of Veterans Affairs, former Deputy Director Charles Johnson said the environmental assessment was delayed when the Arkansas Historic Preservation and federal VA asked for an archaeological survey of the grounds.
Johnson said both agencies thought the golf course might have added historic value to the North Little Rock Veterans Administration Hospital Historic District -- a 1,100-acre complex that includes 15 large ward buildings and 76 other structures built in the 1890s.
"That added 30 to 45 days that nobody had planned for," Johnson said at the time. "They came back and said they didn't feel they found anything of archaeological significance."
The environmental assessment was published in December, and it received no feedback during the period it was up for public comment.
McDonald's action Tuesday awarded the extension that the state agency and congressional delegation had requested.
Cissy Rucker, the former director of the state Department of Veterans Affairs who retired in January, posted on social media Tuesday celebrating the news. She thanked Johnson, former Gov. Mike Beebe and the state's congressional delegation, and she said that "after almost a year of work," the approval "cleared the way for VA construction funding."
Boozman, Cotton and Hill applauded the land transfer in statements released Wednesday.
"A new nursing home for our aging veterans in central Arkansas is much needed and long overdue," Hill said.
According to background included in the environmental assessment, there are about 90,000 veterans living in central Arkansas, and the state is projected to need 653 beds for veterans by 2020.
Arkansas currently has only one veterans home, which is in Fayetteville and houses about 80.
Metro on 03/26/2015