The Florida Department of Veteran Affairs is done getting the land ready and has started construction of the Ardie R. Copas State Veterans’ Nursing Home.
“What they’re doing now is they’re working on the foundation to support the vertical construction,” said Steve Murray, communications director.
By publication time it’s likely the foundation will be long done and the exterior of the facility will be going up. “We just completed, earlier this week, the utility service agreements with all the parties,” Murray said late last week. “We can now inlay the utilities to go on the property and start vertical construction.”
The ceremonial groundbreaking was on March 20 this year. Almost exactly three months later crews started clearing and leveling the 28-acre site on the western end of Tradition Parkway.
“There was lots of timber out there,” Murray said. “The ground was uneven.”
In addition to clearing and leveling, workers had to build four stormwater-management ponds. The 121,000-square foot state veterans nursing home has to be able to handle major hurricanes. The state veterans department builds the facilities to shelter residents in place during disasters to minimize trauma.
Murray said the Florida Department of Veteran Affairs – which is separate from the similarly named federal veterans department – expects construction to be done by the winter holidays in 2019. “About this time next year we will accept from the builder the home.,” Murray said. “We’ll have it inspected. Once it’s accepted, we have to fill it with furniture and beds. That’s probably a two- to three-month process.”
After that, the FDVA will start taking applications for up to 120 residents as it prepares for a ribbon cutting. Murray declined to estimate exactly when the ribbon cutting and opening would be.
“Early 2020,” he said. “It’s hard to pin me down. That’s a lot of time. There’s still another hurricane season to go through.”
When it’s opened, the home will fill up steadily. “We won’t bring in 120 residents on the same day,” Murray said. “It’ll be a gradual process. We’ll bring in a smattering each week.”
The Ardie R. Copas State Veterans’ Nursing Home will likely be the eighth in the state. The veterans department will soon start refurbishing a former VA community living center in Orlando to be a state veterans nursing home. The as-yet unnamed facility will likely open a couple months before Copas. The local home is named after a Fort Pierce native who was awarded the Medal of Honor for actions done while serving in Cambodia during the Vietnam War.
Once the Copas home is at capacity, it will have about 175 workers in everything from food service and administration to nursing. The layout will be two-resident rooms set up in “neighborhoods” of 20 beds each. One of the neighborhoods, with 60 beds, will be devoted to caring for residents with dementia and Alzheimer’s.
