Construction of a long-talked-about veterans outpatient clinic will begin in 2025 at Rolla.
“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 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 a while.
“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.
PHELPS COUNTY FOCUS
