‘Great addition’ to Sallisaw on the horizon with 2024 opening of veterans center

The Sallisaw Veterans Center, under construction on U.S. 59 south of I-40, will comprise 215,000 square feet.

Drive by the construction site for the Sallisaw Veterans Center on U.S. 59 and you’ll surely admit it’s a pretty big place.

But step inside the front door for a tour of the facility — like about 50 business and professional people did Wednesday after the monthly Sallisaw Chamber of Commerce membership luncheon — and the enormity of the new center is awe-inspiring.

For comparison, think about the Northwest Arkansas National Airport terminal, which is 114,600 square feet.

Then add the Fort Smith Regional Airport terminal, which is 52,200 square feet.

And then add Roland High School’s Ranger Dome, which is 20,000 square feet.

And then add the Ranger Dome again.

That’s an aggregate 206,800 square feet.

About 50 business and professional people — dwarfed by the soaring ceilings of the Sallisaw Veterans Center — toured the construction site for the 215,000-square-foot facility. The center is expected to be completed by December.

And that’s still not as big as the Sallisaw Veterans Center, which is 215,000 square feet.

If you’ve been in the Fort Smith Convention Center, the Sallisaw VA is almost twice as big as that municipal convention center.

And while a 2022 work stoppage along with weather delays and supply chain issues have only heightened Sallisaw’s anticipation for the center’s long-awaited opening — it was originally expected to open in March 2023, but is now projected to be December 2024 — the Oklahoma Department of Veterans Affairs (ODVA) is just as excited about what it expects to be “a great addition to your community.”

“We’re so excited to be here,” Shawn Kirkland, deputy director for ODVA, told Sallisaw Chamber of Commerce members Wednesday at the monthly membership luncheon at Indian Capital Technical Center. “It was four or five years ago, we were going through the selection process and where to put a new veterans home in Oklahoma, and Sallisaw just blew it out of the water. It was an easy choice.”

Sallisaw beat out finalists Poteau and Muskogee for the new eastern Oklahoma veterans center location. At the beginning of the selection process, there were six communities, which also included McAlester, Hugo and Holdenville.

Following the September 2020 groundbreaking at the 90-acre location on U.S. 59 south of I-40, construction of the long-term care facility made major strides during the ensuing year, with the skeleton of the sprawling center quickly taking shape.

Then the fallout from the pandemic took its toll on the supply chain, and the eight-month work stoppage completely restructured the proposed opening dates.

Business and professional people — dwarfed by the soaring ceilings of the Sallisaw Veterans Center — recently toured the construction site for the 215,000-square-foot facility.

“Seems like a long time ago, but we’re finally getting close. We are a little bit over 70% there,” Kirkland said. “Right now it’s projected [to be the] end of November, early December for completion, at which point we will have the opportunity to start the process of getting certified by the federal VA to fill the building up.

“There is a process with that that’ll take a little bit of time, but to start with, we’ll have 20 veterans move in, we’ll have some staff that we have to hire to take care of them,” Kirkland explained. “We have to show for a period of time that we’re doing what we need to do and pass an inspection and all those things before we’re given the go-ahead to fill the building up.

“So in very short order, you’ll start seeing recruitment efforts for staff. I think that’s probably the biggest challenge for any business right now. So when the building is full and we’re fully operational, we’ll be looking at somewhere between 250 and 300 jobs. Most of those will be of the clinical nature — nurse aides, LPNs, RNs, that sort of thing. We’ll also have a full food service staff, we’ll have staff for activities, we’ll have transport staff, we’ll have therapy — anything that you would basically see in a skilled nursing home, and even more than that,” Kirkland said.

“We’re so excited to finally get to this point where we can start talking about what it’s going to look like when we open. It seems like it’s been a long time. We had some challenges with design and with the pandemic and supply and all of those things. So it was kind of a perfect storm, but we made it through it.

Kirkland

“I look forward to being integrated into the community, doing what we can to support the community, and I think you will find that this is going to be a great addition to your community. We really look forward to you having it and us being able to support any way we can from our headquarters and across the state with the resources we have,” Kirkland said.

When completed, the Sallisaw Veterans Center will feature four buildings — three residential “neighborhoods” and a central community center. A neighborhood at the center is similar to a subdivision in a housing development. In two of the buildings currently under construction, a neighborhood consists of 72 residential rooms, with a third building comprised of 34 residences. The centralized community center will offer a reception area, dining room, a large room that can be used as a theater or a chapel, space for arts and crafts, a barber shop, a physical therapy room and a pharmacy to serve medical needs of the residents.

“This is a state-of-theart facility. It’s a home-like environment, and will be the premier facility of its kind in the U.S.,” former ODVA Executive Director Joel Kintsel said at the October 2021 chamber luncheon, which is when a previous public tour was conducted.

In addition to Kirkland’s remarks to the chamber membership, Jason Zhang, international director of operations for Millison Technology Co. Ltd., presented a preview of what the former SLPT Global Pump Group manufacturing operation will look like. Millison, which is headquartered in Chongqing, China, recently purchased SLPT and is in the process of transforming the Sallisaw plant to produce aluminum alloy precision die castings in the communication and automotive fields.

The Sallisaw Veterans Center, located on 90 acres along U.S. 59 south of I-40, is expected to be completed by December 2024.