Despite a general paring back of government real estate and personnel cuts at the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, a new outpatient VA clinic in the Illinois Medical District is apparently a go for now.
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The U.S. General Services Administration is proposing an outpatient clinic lease of about 172K SF for the VA to expand vital outpatient services in the Chicago area, according to a GSA lease prospectus.
The GSA argues in the prospectus that the care spaces at the city's Jesse Brown VA Medical Center are inadequate and undersized for the current and projected veteran workload demand for services.
This lease is for an ambulatory care annex in the Illinois Medical District, which will provide space for primary care, mental health, and physical medicine and rehabilitation services, a VA spokesperson told Bisnow this week. The VA doesn’t have a scheduled start date for construction.
The proposed maximum lease term is 20 years with an estimated total annual cost of about $16.3M, or roughly $95 per SF.
The lease prospectus comes amid moves from the GSA to slash the government's real estate footprint as well as hefty proposed cuts at the VA.
Last week, the GSA announced it had identified 443 properties across the U.S. that it could dispose of, most of which are office buildings. One day later, that list was no longer on its website. The page is now titled “Non-core property list (Coming soon).”
The VA also released a memo last week saying it will begin massive layoffs of more than 80,000 workers as soon as June. The memo directs the department's human resources team to start evaluating the agency's operations, with a focus on firing civil servants.
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