There’s renewed hope that a partially finished veterans home on the southwest corner of Forest Preserve Drive and Oak Park Avenue will be completed after the project sat idle for the past year.
A budget deal reached by state lawmakers last month provides the state’s $8.5 million obligation of the $70.5 million price tag of the facility, which had been slated to open this month before the state’s budget impasse stopped the construction timeline last summer.
The five-story, 200-room long-term health care facility is supposed to be Chicago’s first long-term care center for vets. A groundbreaking ceremony was attended by state lawmakers in September 2014 to celebrate the start of construction, which began the following month and continued until June of last year.
Since then, the facility — envisioned as a specialized housing and medical care facility (including memory loss care) for aging veterans in the Chicago area — was left in a futile state as it hung in the balance of the state budget woes.
Lawmakers who supported the project, including state Sen. John Mulroe, D-Chicago, who sponsored a bill earlier this year in an attempt to get Gov. Rauner to re-appropriate the money that was originally earmarked for the facility — were unsure whether the brick walks that stand on the site would ever materialize into what would be Illinois’ fifth home for veterans.
“The home became a victim of the Illinois budget impasse,” Mulroe said in a statement. “It’s outrageous that projects like the Chicago Veterans’ Home ever got caught in the line of fire.”
A spokesperson for the Illinois Department of Veterans did not have a date when construction on the facility would resume.
When the project was first announced in 2013, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs approved federal reimbursement for up to 65 percent of the costs for the project, meaning the federal government would pay up to $45.8 million of the construction costs.
The home, located in Chicago’s Dunning neighborhood, will treat veterans for a variety of medical needs, including diseases like Alzheimer’s and dementia, according to the Illinois Department of Veterans Affairs.
The Chicago area is home to more than half of the 764,000 veterans in the state, according to the Illinois Department of Veterans’ Affairs, but the closest skilled nursing home with specialized care for veterans is more than an hour drive south of Chicago, in Kankakee County.
Natalie Hayes is a freelance reporter for Pioneer Press.
