At the beginning of the project, we spent several months raising the site and prepping for utilities and infrastructure. We finished the steel frame of the building within the first year. Since then, we’ve installed utilities, paved the parking lot, and put most of the outer walls on the building. As of February 2022, our focus is on weather-proofing the building so we can start installing drywall, electrical, and other interior systems.

The Community Based Outpatient Clinic (CBOC) and Central Utility Plant are scheduled for completion in 2023. To finish the complex, two additional facilities will be built—the Engineering Logistics Building and the Community Living Center. These phases will move forward concurrently; the CBOC will be open for patients before the other buildings are complete.

The Sacramento District is responsible for building the Community Based Outpatient Clinic and all other facilities on this site. Once the clinic is completed, we will turn it over to the VA Palo Alto Health Care System. Then they will go through an activation period where they staff and equip the clinic before the first patient day. We are actively working with VA Palo Alto’s activation team to help make the turnover as smooth as possible.

The partnership between the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the VA goes back to the end of World War II, when a massive influx of veterans created a need for new veterans hospitals. We have been working with VA to create world-class facilities to meet the needs of veterans ever since. Also, the VA is only one of the federal partners who work with us for facility and infrastructure improvements. Our other partners include the Department of Defense, the Bureau of Reclamation, and the U.S. Forest Service.

The project was awarded at $143 million and is still being operated within the authorized amount. Our goal is to be good stewards of the taxpayer dollars being used for this project.

The original estimated completion for the Community Based Outpatient Clinic and Central Utility Plant was late 2022. There are always some unforeseen factors on a project of this size, and the delays we’ve experienced on this project so far are fairly typical. Our current estimated completion date is sometime in the first half of 2023. We were able to keep up a steady pace of construction while maintaining strenuous safety standards for our employees and contractors.

A project this size is always a large challenge on its own. On this project, we’ve had to continue work through a pandemic, wildfires, bad air quality, and the same supply chain issues the rest of the country is familiar with. Despite that, we are on target to complete this project by 2023 and focused on our goal of delivering a world-class facility for our veterans.

Working with our VA partners, we have updated the design of the interior pharmacy to meet new operational requirements put in place since the original design. This upgrade will expand the capability of the facility. We remain focused on constructing a world-class facility that meets the needs of Central Valley veterans.

In addition to the Community Based Outpatient Clinic and the Central Utility Plant, we also plan to build an Engineering Logistics Building and a Community Living Center (CLC). The CLC is an 80-120 bed nursing home for veterans in need of daily medical care. We are finishing the design for the CLC and will next move into the Acquisition phase of the project, in which we prepare the contract for proposals, collect proposals, and award the contract. Businesses can submit a formal proposal for this project at www.sam.gov.

Our primary contractor is Amoroso Construction. We are also working with AT&T to install communications, the City of Stockton on offsite water and sewer to the campus, PG&E for gas and power to the campus and San Joaquin County on improvements to Manthey Road. Most of our contractors are Northern California or Central Valley businesses, and we partner with local governments on all of our projects.