Construction begins on Veterans Affairs Puget Sound clinic in Silverdale
After many years of planning and quite a few setbacks, ground was broken on Monday morning on the long-awaited Veterans Affairs outpatient clinic in Silverdale.
"As we break ground today, there's one word that comes to mind more than any other, and it's 'Phew!'" said U.S. Rep. Derek Kilmer. "To say that this has been a long time coming would be quite an understatement."
In October 2015, the VA Puget Sound selected a building on Kitsap Way in Bremerton, which previously housed a Rite Aid, as its new clinic site. But the project was waylaid when it was discovered the building wasn't up to federal seismic standards. The VA terminated the lease for that facility in January 2017 and headed back to the drawing board before selecting the Silverdale site last July.
Construction should be completed in about one year, said Mike Brown, a partner with Veterans Plaza LLC, which will build the clinic. Bremerton-based architecture firm Rice Fergus Miller designed it.
For years, the VA Puget Sound has sought to build a larger clinic in Kitsap County to address the backlog and long wait times at the existing 6,000-square-foot VA clinic at 925 Adele Ave. in Bremerton.
"We've definitely outgrown that space, not only with the number of veterans we need to serve, but when it comes to technology and the services available there," said Michael Tadych, director of the VA Puget Sound Health Care System.
About 37,000 veterans in the area are eligible to receive health care from the Bremerton clinic.
"(They) should be able to receive the health care services they deserve, right here in our community, rather than traveling to Seattle or American Lake for attention," said Kitsap County Commissioner Charlotte Garrido.
The future Silverdale clinic will be a 15,000-square-foot, one-story building with a large lobby space, a covered drop-off area and a parking lot of more than 90 spots.
The clinic will be located at 9177 Ridgetop Blvd., right in the middle of the county's commercial hub, with access to Clear Creek and the neighboring hiking trail.
Urban City Brew Co. is currently located at the future clinic's street address. Once construction begins to pick up, the coffee shop will be moving to a new location at 15220 Silverdale Way NW, said owner Kaitlin Hubbell.
The clinic will offer expanded mental health services and tele-medicine services as well as provide access to an additional home-based primary care team and on-site physical therapy, said VA Puget Sound spokeswoman Kimberly Wilkie.
The VA opened a temporary administrative office at 2771 Hemlock St. in Bremerton at the beginning of March to alleviate some of the strain on the Bremerton clinic until the Silverdale clinic begins providing care to patients.
Certain health care functions, such as the home-based primary care, tele-health and tele-mental health programs, moved over to the annex to open up more clinical space to treat patients at the Bremerton clinic.
Although the annex predominantly houses administrative functions, patients can be seen at the annex for tele-dermatology services by appointment only. For all other health care needs, patients need to go to the Bremerton clinic, Wilkie said.
Once the Silverdale clinic is operational, both the Bremerton clinic and the temporary administration office are slated to close.
Many veterans are looking forward to the expand care possibilities the larger clinic could offer.
"I'll have to come check it out because the old facility didn't have what I needed," said Daniel Defenbaugh, a veteran who served in the Navy for seven and half years and worked at the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard.
Although Defenbaugh has sought out mostly private health care for his medical needs, he goes to the Bremerton clinic when he can.
"They seem to have a caring staff, but they're restricted on what they can provide," he said. "I think the frustration with so many veterans is the wait time, but that's a problem with healthcare in general."
Defenbaugh is looking forward to when the clinic opens for the possibility of it becoming a sort of central meeting place for veterans and the community to interact.
"Another aspect of it is that could be more of a kind of meeting place where people can just kind of show up and have some interaction with some of the vets as sort of a way to give back," he said.
By: Julianne Stanford
Source: Kitsap Sun