WASHINGTON – Fulfilling a commitment to Florida veterans, Secretary of Veterans Affairs Dr. James B. Peake today joined Governor Charlie Crist (R-Fla.), members of the Florida Congressional delegation and local officials to break ground for a $717 million, full-service medical center in Orlando, at a 65-acre site off State Route 417 and Lake Nona Boulevard.
“The groundbreaking for this new VA medical center today is the culmination of a lot of collaborative, hard work. It will result in the best services for our Florida veterans,” Secretary Peake said prior to the event. “Support from Florida’s governor and congressional delegation has been key and VA is proud to bring this state-of-the-art facility to Orlando.”
When opened in 2012, the one million-plus square-foot facility will have 134 inpatient beds in addition to a 120-bed community living center and 60-bed residential rehabilitation program. The hospital will have two linear accelerators for radiation oncology, eight operating rooms, two cardiac catheterization laboratories, two magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) machines and several computed tomography (CT) scanners.
An outpatient clinic and a veterans benefits office also are planned at the site.
The facility will be across the street from the University of Central Florida’s College of Medicine and Health Sciences campus, along with the Burnham Institute of Research and the Nemours Children’s Hospital, creating a “medical city” in southeast Orlando.
