More than a decade of diligent work and patient waiting will soon be rewarded for the local, state and federal leaders who have pursued one of southcentral Kentucky’s top priorities: the establishment of a nursing home for military veterans.

Those leaders are celebrating the recent approval by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs of $19.5 million in federal funding for the building of the Bowling Green Veterans Center. Aside from actual construction, this approval was the final major hurdle to clear in order for the facility to become a brick-and-mortar reality.

The total price tag for the facility is $30 million, and advocates such as Ray Biggerstaff – who was a captain of a medevac unit during the Vietnam War and later spent 30 years teaching in the Department of Health and Safety at Western Kentucky University – previously worked to secure $10.5 million from the Kentucky General Assembly. That left a balance of $19.5 million, which had to be approved by the VA.

That federal approval was slightly delayed, however, after a 20-acre tract in the Kentucky Transpark that was initially donated to the cause by the Inter-Modal Transportation Authority proved inadequate. So, in February, the ITA donated a different site – 25 acres behind the Crown Holdings Inc. aluminum can manufacturing plant being built on Mizpah Road. This new site checked off all the VA’s boxes, paving the way for the approval letter from the VA that was issued late last month.

Fully funded at long last, construction of the facility could begin in the spring of 2022 and continue into 2023, according to Mark Bowman, executive director of the Office of Kentucky Veterans Centers. Originally envisioned as a 90-bed facility, the Bowling Green center will most likely be scaled back to 60 beds, Bowman said. He expects it to have up to 140 employees and be built to allow a future expansion.

The local advocate group – which, along with Biggerstaff, also included area veterans such as the late Robert Spiller, Bill Lytle and Danny Young, among others – spent years navigating the bureaucratic maze and working through political and geographic squabbles. Their collective efforts are commendable, and their achievements are nothing short of historic for this region. Credit is also due to all the state legislators who helped secure Kentucky’s portion of the construction cost, as well as the $2.5 million for design and pre-construction work that was approved just more than a year ago.

The Bowling Green nursing facility will be Kentucky’s fifth veterans nursing home, joining locations in Hazard, Wilmore, Hanson and Radcliff.

A few years ago, a study commissioned by the Kentucky Department of Veterans Affairs determined that a 20-county area surrounding Bowling Green had the highest need for such a facility, with about 40,000 veterans living in southcentral Kentucky.

Once complete and operational, the nursing home will help close a serious gap in services available to veterans in our region. It will be a source of tremendous pride for southcentral Kentucky for decades to come, and it will benefit hundreds of area veterans who deserve access to exceptional care right here in their own community.