After more than a decade of legislation and state funds, construction hasn’t begun on the Veterans Affairs nursing home in Beckley. It was originally supposed to be completed in 2025.
By: Amelia Ferrell Knisely for West Virginia Watch, www.westvirginiawatch.com
On a sunny fall day in 2023, then-Gov. Jim Justice pushed a silver shovel into the ground, ceremoniously throwing dirt in the air to celebrate the groundbreaking of a veterans’ nursing home in Beckley, West Virginia.
“This facility is long, long overdue,” Justice said in an interview at the event. “Honest to goodness, this one I wanted really bad.”
At the request of Justice, state lawmakers set aside around $8 million in 2021 for the facility. Federal Veterans’ Affairs funds were supposed to pay for the rest of the project.
Construction was expected to be completed by 2025.
Now, the site remains empty. Nothing has been built due to missing federal funds from the VA.
Justice, a Republican now serving in the U.S. Senate, is frustrated by the situation, his spokesperson told West Virginia Watch.
“The issue has been raised with the VA,” Will O’Grady, communications director for Justice, said Dec. 17. “It’s not going away until we get a firm answer.”
The facility was supposed to house 90 to 120 veterans in four separate communities on-site. It would include a library, chapel, physical therapy room and a unit dedicated specifically to veterans battling dementia and Alzheimer’s disease.
Then-Gov. Jim Justice attended a groundbreaking ceremony for the Charles Calvin Rogers Veterans Nursing Facility in Beckley, West Virginia, on Oct. 23, 2023.
The project was initially expected to cost $44 million.
“ … Although earmarked as a Priority 1 project within the VA’s State Home Construction Grant Program, the federal money hasn’t been released,” Randy Coleman, Deputy Cabinet Secretary for the West Virginia Department of Veterans Assistance, said in an email.
Coleman said there were “a high number” of Tier 1 projects also awaiting federal funding.
“The VA hasn’t given us – or any other state, I am told – an indication of when funding might be disbursed,” he said.
So far, $3.2 million has been spent designing the nursing home, state Department of Veterans Assistance Secretary Ryan Kennedy told lawmakers in February.
In 2023, Justice ceremoniously signed architectural and engineering contracts with SFCS Architects and Thrasher Engineering to oversee the architectural and engineering work for the Beckley facility. The companies didn’t return inquires about the project.
Daniel Hall, a Raleigh County commissioner, served in the state Legislature while Beckley-area lawmakers worked to bring a VA nursing home to Southern West Virginia.
“I’m surprised that the feds haven’t stepped up to do their part. We’re supplying our match, and why are they not doing theirs?” he asked.
Beckley lawmakers asked for VA nursing home more than a decade ago.
More than a decade ago, veterans told lawmakers that a Beckley nursing home was needed. In the aging state, West Virginia’s only VA nursing home is in Clarksburg.
“I know there’s a lot of [veterans] who worked on this have since passed on,” Hall said. “Maybe their work won’t be in vain.”
In 2014, state senators passed a bill mandating the construction of the facility. The veterans’ nursing home would sit adjacent to Jackie Withrow Hospital.
“The Legislature finds that nearly 200,000 veterans in this state have distinguished themselves with the highest level of participation per capita of any state in the wars fought by this nation,” the legislation said. “ … An aging veterans’ population which suffers from wartime disabilities and illnesses are, or will be, in need of skilled nursing care.”
Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin signed the bill into law, but it didn’t come with any funding. Years passed without any movement on the project.
Then, Justice made it a passion project and, with the Legislature’s support in 2021, he earmarked around $8 million in the budget bill that would serve as a match for federal grant dollars to build the facility.
“We just thought for sure it was going to happen. Obviously, it wasn’t.” Hall said.
And money from a 2016 bill that generated taxes on certain high-powered fireworks was also supposed to help pay for the Beckley VA nursing home.
O’Grady said Justice would continue looking to the holdup on needed federal funding.
Justice, while governor, said in 2023 the new nursing facility would “mean the world to our veterans and their families who have needed this facility in Southern West Virginia for a long time.”
The hospital will be named in honor of a Vietnam Veteran and Congressional Medal of Honor recipient Charles Calvin Rogers, who died in 1990.
President Richard Nixon awarded Rogers, a Fayette County native, the Medal of Honor in 1970, making him the highest ranking African American servicemember to receive the honor.
West Virginia Watch is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. West Virginia Watch maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Leann Ray for questions: info@westvirginiawatch.com.
