The 910,115-square-foot medical center will be built by Turner Construction and Walsh Construction as a joint venture. It will feature 104 beds, a facility for female veterans, two parking structures, a utility plant, roads and sidewalks.

As the Robley Rex Medical Center Director, Stephen Black, noted in a Facebook video, this project has been floated since 2006. He called it a “state of the art medical center that our veterans deserve.”

“This is gonna take us into 2025 so we are hopeful for groundbreaking here this year,” he added.

According to local media, the Walsh-Turner joint venture identified $95 million in projects that will be subcontracted in its bid, which would include work from veteran-owned small businesses and service disabled veteran-owned small businesses. 

“Not only is this going to be a hospital that focuses on world-class care for veterans, but there’s going to be lots of opportunities for work for veterans in the building of this hospital,” Black said.

The new campus will replace the existing Robley Rex VA Medical Center, and it has not been decided yet what will be done with the 69-year-old facility which serves 150,000 veterans.

“This new facility will greatly enhance how we honor service and empower the health of our Veterans by providing the most excellent and advanced healthcare available in the nation,” the Louisville Veteran Affairs website notes. “The new Robley Rex VAMC campus is being designed keeping patient centered care and whole health concepts in mind, in order to provide a comfortable, safe, and healing environment for our Veterans.”

Walsh-Turner is also building a $1.8 billion medical center at Ohio University.

Robley Rex announced the contract award just one day after the VA opened a new clinic in southwest Louisville that is expected to service 8,000 veterans. That project came out at $4..7 million and featured a 33,750 square foot facility.