VA will fund Walla Walla clinic
Work on outpatient facility expected to begin in 2010
The Department of Veterans Affairs has allocated $71.4 million for design and construction of an outpatient clinic in Walla Walla.
Thursday’s announcement came two years after then-VA Secretary Jim Nicholson visited the south-central Washington city, where he promised to build a state-of-the-art primary care facility to replace the aging Wainwright Memorial Veteran Affairs Medical Center. In 2003, a VA commission recommended closing the medical center, including its inpatient psychiatric facility and nursing home.
Since then, U.S. Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers and U.S. Sen. Patty Murray, a member of the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee, have pressured the VA to make the Walla Walla clinic a priority.
“This is a major victory that veterans in southeast Washington, northern Oregon and Idaho have waited a long time for,” Murray said.
McMorris Rodgers said construction of the 65,000-square-foot clinic is expected to begin in 2010.
“The staff at the Walla Walla VA medical center already provides quality care, and I look forward to seeing the even greater care they will deliver with this new, modern facility,” McMorris Rodgers said.
Veteran Buddy Georgia called Thursday’s announcement “some of the best news we’ve had in a while.” Georgia is a member of the Blue Mountain Veterans Coalition that marched alongside union employees of the medical center in a 2003 protest of VA plans to close the facility.
The new clinic on the Wainwright campus will serve nearly 70,000 veterans from three states.
In February, Nicholson’s successor, Secretary James Peake, also came to Walla Walla and announced plans to build a $6.7 million residential mental health facility for veterans.
The 36-bed, 22,000-square-foot facility will provide employment services, help for homeless veterans, and substance abuse treatment as well as other mental health care.
Construction is expected to begin in the spring.