By Illinois Radio Network
SPRINGFIELD – The Illinois Department of Veterans Affairs will soon be looking for contractors to build a $230 million veterans home in Quincy.
Quincy’s veterans’ home had been around since 1886. Lawmakers approved funding for a replacement after more than a dozen deaths related to a Legionella bacteria outbreak. The state appropriated $53.1 million for Quincy campus improvements like water projects, emergency repairs and other improvements in 2019 and re-appropriated $23.9 million for 2020.
Although the state updated its water systems and procedures to handle possible outbreaks, Illinois Department of Veterans Affairs Acting Director Linda Chapa LaVia said a new state-of-the-art complex is going to go up. It is projected to be completed by 2023. The agency must find contractors first.
“We’re going to be going to four different locations throughout the state to show what our preliminary drawings are and trying to get some interest in picking up these jobs for us so we can start that really quickly,” Chapa LaVia said.
She expects the search to begin in November. The $230 million bond-financed project was included in the state’s latest spending plan.
“We had to come upfront with the money to build and then we’ll be reimbursed on the back end by the federal government to help us and put that money in the general fund,” she said.
The project will use a design-build approach, as opposed to a design, bid, and then build method. Supporters of the design-build process have said it saves taxpayers time and money on public works projects by having the design and build components work hand-in-hand.
Chapa LaVia said she hopes that it will be a model for other public works projects across the state.
She said construction of the long-stalled 200-bed veterans’ home in Chicago that’s already cost taxpayers $118 million got an additional $20 million in this year’s state budget.
The project was started and stalled under former Gov. Pat Quinn.
Former Gov. Bruce Rauner last year said the project was bogged down by bureaucracy.
“There’s a classic Illinois government bureaucracy at work,” Rauner said in July 2018. “That veterans home has been stumbling and struggling and over budget and restarted for years, years and years, long before I became governor.”
Rauner said the process involved in the Chicago-area home was a “nightmare,” but he committed to finishing the project. He said said many millions of tax dollars had been wasted already.
Gov. J.B. Pritzker got $20 million in the budget to finish the project and it’s on track to open in the spring.
Chapa LaVia said state officials interviewed candidates to administer the home this month and are set to complete the home by December.
“By December also we’ll be taking applications for individuals who would like to be a client of ours there,” she said.
State Rep. Stephanie Kifowit, D-Oswego, said Illinois’ other veterans facility will need attention.
“Looking at Anna and in Monteno and all the other homes that we operate to make sure that when you put your faith and trust for that veteran, that loved one, that war hero, in the state of Illinois that we take care of them and that they’re safe and that’s our goal,” Kifowit said.
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