By HFT Staff

Hoar Construction announced the completion of a 144,000-square-foot U.S. Veterans Affairs (VA) mental health clinic in Temple Terrace, Florida just north of Tampa. Cullinan Properties, Leo A Daly,and Hoar Construction were selected by the General Services Administration (GSA) as the project team on the $100 million project, which broke ground in Q4 2021. The clinic is currently under an activation period to hire and train staff, and the first patients will be seen in January of 2024. 

The two-story facility sits on almost 20 acres of land and is a consolidation project to bring together services from three local hospitals into one location. The clinic was designed with direct input from patients and clinicians, taking into consideration the unique needs of veterans. The building includes 60 patient rooms, a two-story 100,000 square foot Clinic with 265 consult rooms, an activities courtyard with a basketball court, walkways, a garden shed and planters, a full-service kitchen and dining room and a social activities room with a residential kitchen for patients to practice life skills. The facility has a Green Globes rating of two globes, which is above the one-globe requirement of all VA facilities and measures the environmental sustainability, health and wellness of commercial real estate projects. 

During construction, Hoar used Building Information Modeling (BIM) to save valuable time and money for the installation of overhead mechanical, electrical and plumbing components. At the beginning of the project, Hoar also provided value engineering services that saved the clients over $750,000, and selected alternatives for light fixtures that saved an additional $100,000. The team credits much of their cost savings to early procurement of flooring materials and other major equipment, which were subject to major cost escalations from the time of initial project planning to the completion two years later.  

Hoar managed to keep the project on schedule throughout supply chain issues and weather setbacks, which is also attributed to early procurement of materials and the team’s ability to pivot to alternate materials when needed to avoid delays. In September of 2022, Hurricane Ian made landfall just 100 miles from the project site, costing one week of construction time. Despite this and additional weather-related challenges, Hoar was still able to deliver the clinic two weeks ahead of schedule.