ALABAMA STATE EDITION
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April 29 2015 Vol. XXVIII • No. 9
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Your Alabama Connection • Rich Olivier, Atlanta, GA • 1-800-409-1479
VA Medical Center to Serve Birmingham Veterans For U.S. Air Force veteran Freddie Jones II, making a trip to the Birmingham VA Medical Center can be exhausting. “If I have an appointment at one o’clock, I start traveling at eleven a.m., because just circling around an area close to the center to park takes up time, and you usually have to walk four of five blocks,” said Jones, who suffers from serious vision problems and depends on his daughter to assist him during medical visits. “If you have a condition that requires you to walk slowly, you can imagine how difficult that makes things.” The tiresome trek will soon be a memory, however, as construction continues on a $66 million outpatient services clinic and parking structure. The VA Primary Care Annex and parking deck was designed to help officials better serve local veterans by relocating some services from the VA Medical Center, and providing a centralized parking location for patients, visitors and staff members. “BL Harbert is pleased to construct this facility for the Department of Veterans Affairs,” said Gary W. Savage, BL Harbert’s president of U.S. Operations. “Our veterans have so bravely served our country in many capacities around the world to ensure our freedom. Helping to meet their health care needs through construction of a state-of-the-art healthcare facility is an honor we embrace.” BL Harbert International has teamed with the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, developer Graham & Company and Austin, Texas-based Page architects to build the facility, which will span an entire city block. It will be located near the Red Mountain Expressway between University Boulevard and 7th Avenue South in Birmingham’s medical district. The project, slated for completion in fall of 2015, calls for a three-story structure and eightstory precast parking garage. The 730,000 sq. ft. (67,819 sq m), 2,300space parking deck will provide much closer access to the Birmingham VA Medical Center Page photo at 700 19th Street South. Currently, patients A rendering of the VA Primary Care Annex. park at the city deck at the corner of Fourth Avenue North and 22nd Street and are bussed several blocks Thomas Smith, director of the Birmingham VA Medical Center, said the 66,000 sq. ft. (6,131 sq m) annex will house to the hospital. The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs operates the several outpatient procedures, women’s health, mental nation's largest integrated health care system, with more than health and a number of lab and technical functions. The relo1,700 hospitals, clinics, community living centers, domicil- cation of those operations from the existing medical center is iaries, readjustment counseling centers and other facilities. expected to allow for an expansion of the emergency room,
By Cindy Riley
CEG CORRESPONDENT
BL Harbert photo
The project, which called for the removal of 6,000 cu. yds. (4,587 cu m) of dirt and material, has required a variety of equipment.
a new dialysis center and other improvements in the hospital. According to Jeffrey Hester Birmingham VA spokesman, “The new Primary Care Annex and parking lot is something we are incredibly excited about, for a few reasons. First, the veteran population we serve has been growing at such a quick rate that we have outgrown the facility we are currently in. This new annex will allow us to move some of our services to decompress the main facility, and open up more room so we can continue to serve our veterans and give them the quality care they deserve, even as we continue to grow. “The other thing we’re excited about is the parking deck. If you were to ask one of our veterans what their biggest complaint was about the Birmingham VA Medical Center, there’s a good chance they would say parking. It has been an issue for us for years. We currently contract parking on the north side of Birmingham from the city. The new parking see VA page 2