Walsh/DeMaria Joint Venture V based in Chicago, Illinois, has secured a contract worth $98.8 million from the Department of Veterans Affairs to construct a new rehabilitation center on the VA Palo Alto Health Care System’s campus.
Walsh/DeMaria Joint Venture V secured the contract in September 2011. The Polytrauma-Blind Rehabilitation Center will be designed according to LEED Silver rating. Construction of the three-floor facility is slated for completion in spring 2014.
The 174,000-sq ft building will be the maiden and only facility of VA featuring a Polytrauma Rehabilitation Center and a Blind Rehabilitation Center. It is also VA’s biggest consolidated rehabilitation center. The facility will feature 24, 12 and 32 beds for the polytrauma program, the polytrauma transitional rehabilitation program and the blind rehabilitation program respectively.
The Polytrauma-Blind Rehabilitation Center will also feature an outpatient rehabilitation and physical medicine clinic, an outpatient occupational therapy/physical therapy clinic, and clinical schemes for operation Iraqi freedom/ operation enduring freedom veterans. Moreover, a four-floor parking lot for 600 vehicles will be built nearby the center to meet the increasing demand for onsite parking.
Eric K. Shinseki, Secretary of Veterans Affairs, stated that the new Polytrauma-Blind Rehabilitation Center will enable VA to offer better services to the active duty service members and veterans in an advanced facility.
The VA Palo Alto Health Care System was named as the Polytrauma Rehabilitation Center in 2005. Since then, the program has been accommodated in an existing facility originally built in 1960. The Western Blind Rehabilitation Center, started in 1967, has been accommodated in a facility built in 1977.
Source: http://www.va.gov