Property, developers selected for VA clinic

Construction of a long-talked-about veterans outpatient clinic will begin in 2025 at 13063 Old Wire Road, former site of Villa Mobile Home Sales.

“We will close on that site sometime early in January, and construction will begin right away, because the developer is under a deadline to get it done,” Investment Realty owner Mike Woessner told Phelps County Focus.

Completion of the building will be in late 2026. The developers are Specialized Engineering Solutions and Molasky Development. Their tenant will be the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, according to Woessner.

Statistics provided by Crystal McCracken, executive assistant to Woessner, show the one-story building will have 74,530 square feet of space with some 400 parking spaces.

The VA wants the space in Rolla “to provide a modern, state-of-the-art healthcare facility for the Veterans of the Rolla and surrounding communities, including primary care, specialty care and ancillary services.”

The possibility of a VA facility in Rolla has been talked about for awhile.

“We started about two years ago. There were five developers that came to Rolla, that had contacted me, and we started searching out sites that would fit the VA,” Woessner told Phelps County Focus Monday. “They needed a minimum of 12 usable acres, but really preferred to get 15 to 18 acres.”

Woessner said three sites were found and put under contract. One was the former Huffman mobile home tract on Highway 72. Another was property behind Denny’s restaurant on Martin Spring Drive, which was 18 acres owned by Citizens Bank.

“And then two of the developers went under contract with the Villa Mobile home Site,” Woessner said. “That was 18 and half acres, or 18.7, a year ago, and then a motel developer came to me and said he would like a two acre site off of the corner to build up an extended stay hotel.”

The two developers agreed.

“It actually lowered the price of their contract with us by selling that two acres, and they only needed 16 acres,” Woessner said.

That was a year ago.

“And we’ve been extending contracts to get to the point where the VA would select, first, a site, and two, a developer. And we had two developers on that site, and one each on the 18 acres and the Huffman tract.”

The VA has made that selection now.

No one from the VA could be reached Monday morning, Columbus Day. In September when Phelps County Focus reached out to Representative Jason Smith's office for an update on the VA clinic, the VA advised, “As you’re aware, this approximately 58,734 Net Usable Square Feet (NUSF) Outpatient Clinic lease was authorized in the PACT Act of 2022. The new facility would expand and replace care currently provided at the existing St. James CBOC location. The new right-sized, state-of-the-art, energy-efficient health care facility would provide Primary Care, Mental Health, Specialty Care, and Ancillary services to Veterans in the Rolla area."

Two years ago, Jeff Hoelscher, public affairs officer at the Harry S Truman Memorial VA Hospital in Columbia, confirmed to Phelps County Focus the idea of a major clinic in Rolla was being weighed by officials.

“At this time, the information I can provide concerning a possible VA clinic in Rolla is that it is an option we are in the process of assessing,” Hoelscher wrote. He also noted there was no set timeline for the process and there likely would not be any developments to report for months.

Such was the case.

The need for a facility was spelled out in Phelps County Focus two years ago by Hoelscher: “Military and veteran healthcare in the surrounding area has been in fluctuation in recent years. The new General Leonard Wood Community Hospital is now under construction at Fort Leonard Wood whereas the Salem VA Clinic was closed in 2020. The VA also currently operates the Fort Leonard Wood Community Based Outpatient Clinic in Waynesville as well as a St. James VA Clinic. Both are administered by the Truman VA system. The former Salem clinic was by administered by John J. Pershing VA Medical Center in Poplar Bluff.”