
By Karen Garloch
Courtesy of The Charlotte Observer
The Department of Veterans Affairs has awarded a contract to Childress Klein Properties and a Washington, D.C., partner to design and build a $150 million medical complex that would be the VA’s second location in Charlotte.
Construction is expected to start early next year on the 295,000-square-foot health center on 35 acres at the intersection of Tyvola Road and Cascade Pointe Boulevard, near the Tyvola/Billy Graham Parkway interchange.
The Charlotte Health Care Center is expected to open for patients in the summer of 2016. It will be operated by the W.G. (Bill) Hefner VA Medical Center in Salisbury. A second health center will open in Kernersville about the same time.
The new Charlotte health center has been in the planning stages since 2009 and will help meet the area’s growing demand for health services by veterans. More than 140,000 veterans live in the Charlotte metropolitan area, about 60,000 in Mecklenburg County alone, according to Howard Blackwelder, past president of the Charlotte Metro Area Blind Veterans Association.
The Mid-Atlantic region has seen “the highest and most consistent rate of growth” in the number of veterans over the last 10 years, according to Daniel Hoffmann, the VA’s Mid-Atlantic Health Care Network director.