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While the Warsaw Redevelopment Commission just discussed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with 8404 LLC at their last March meeting, at their meeting Monday they unanimously approved it.
In explaining the MOU on Monday, Warsaw Community and Economic Development Director Jeremy Skinner said, “This MOU is with 8404 LLC and is concerning possible placement of a VA (Veterans Administration) clinic out by where the two Parkview buildings are built (off CR 200N).”
Those are the buildings for Orthopaedics Northeast (ONE) and Parkview Physicians Group, developed by Innovcare.
In discussions with 8404, Skinner said the city, as part of its participation, has talked about giving $1 million towards construction of that project.
“That project would involve building a VA clinic next to the two Parkview facilities out there across from Meijer,” he said. “I think it’s roughly, say around 15,000 square feet; almost a $11 million project. The city’s participation would be capped at $1 million.”
The MOU lays out how the city would get that money to 8404 LLC: 8404 will buy the property from Parkview, the city will buy the property for $1 million from 8404 and then give the property back to 8404. It’s a process that the Redevelopment Commission has gone through with other projects.
“The LLC is a veteran-owned business, as is required by the VA, and we have some of the Innovcare and their partners here to talk about the project,” Skinner said.
Commission member and former Warsaw Mayor Joe Thallemer asked, “Looking at the condition that we’re going to require is that there is a definitive lease agreement with the VA and I’d like to hear a little bit more about what we can expect as a binding agreement.”
Skinner said it’s just an MOU so obviously there’s no guarantees. “There’s steps that we would have to take to finalize that. This is just kind of a first step, and, obviously, one of those steps would be where we would execute the actual disposition of funds into the project, and would be that they have to sign a lease agreement,” he said.
Thallemer said he understood that, but, “With your experience, who does that come from? Does it come from Veterans Affairs? Does it come from the federal government? Somewhere else? I’d really like to know.”
Andrew Stevenson, CEO, president and majority owner of 8404 LLC, as well as a veteran, responded, “To answer your question, the government puts solicitations out nationally. Multiple developers bid on those. They’ve accepted our proposal. The culmination of that is signing the lease agreement with the Department of Veterans Affairs. It is just getting to the finish line with those guys. We are the successful party, bidding. So same questions that they have. We’re talking about the design of the building, things like that. Those are the final steps with the VA.”
Thallemer asked what type of lease term would be involved. Stevenson said it would be a 15-year lease with the federal government starting from the completion of construction. Tyson Chastain, minority owner of 8404 LLC, said they will follow up to confirm that.
Commission President George Clemens asked Stevenson if he’s done this type of project before, and Stevenson said yes.
“We started up in the upper peninsula of Michigan. We’ve bid around the Midwest. We just wrapped up one about double the size in Cincinnati in partnership with Cincinnati Children’s Hospital,” Stevenson said.
Commission member and City Councilman Mike Klondaris asked how many employees would work at the Warsaw clinic. Stevenson said greater than 60, but probably in the “80 ballpark.”
“The VA can be a little funny with the way that they do patient care. There may be more staff present than they see patients in the building because they do a lot of home care, a lot of telehealth, things like that. So, yeah, there will be quite a bit of services provided beyond just what the physical space can provide,” Stevenson continued.
When Clemens asked where the closest VA hospital was, Stevenson said one has to travel to Mishawaka, Fort Wayne or even Marian.
“So this greatly reduces the travel burden on people,” Stevenson said. “It also helps with the budget of the VA because - something that not everybody knows - but when you travel to those appointments, they pay you mileage. So by keeping some of the money back in the community for this clinic, that’s another way the VA saves a little bit there, too.”
Chastain said they did not think getting the award to bring a VA clinic to Warsaw would take this long. “We’re still finalizing the lease itself. No terms are changed in that, it’s just basically the legal language on timing because we want to make sure we sign off on something that we fully commit to on timing purposes.”
He said they’re excited to bring the clinic to the site because they think “holistically” it works very well there.
“We’re hoping to get this thing going because I know there’s some people in this room that probably thought this would happen four years ago,” Chastain stated. “So, we’re really close.”
He said they’ve been in communication with the contracting office, the Fort Wayne VA Hospital and engineers.
“We also have been fortunate, (District 2 U.S.) Congressman (Rudy) Yakym and some of (late Congresswoman) Jackie Walorski’s old staff helped us along the way because I think everybody’s been a little confused on why this has taken so long. Drew, I think, submitted a proposal” at the tail end of 2023, start of 2024, Chastain said.
Chastain also gave thanks to state Rep. Craig Snow for his help on the project.
Chastain said the city’s commitment has helped them to keep things cost-effective. “The concern was, if they weren’t, they would throw it out and we would be back in another three-year cycle. So, we think we’re there. We think we’ll hopefully have a sign-off very soon from the VA,” he said.
For clarification, Thallemer said it would be an out-patient facility and not a hospital or in-patient facility. “And they’ll offer physician visits, rehabilitation, what else?”
Stevenson said he didn’t know all the specialities that will be in there as that’ll be up to the VA, but the VA won’t come to town without primary care and full health.
“From there on, you’ve got things like audiology, perhaps some prosthetics fitting for diabetic patients. It’ll all be relatively routine, things that be will handled at an outpatient center. It’s not designed or licensed for any overnight stay or anything like that, but it’ll be a way to augment the bulk of the services that our veterans are having to travel to go see,” he said.
A little later, Chastain mentioned, “When we went on this journey, the Robinson Construction group was very community focused. It wasn’t just about their property. At first I was a little turned off by that because a lot of people that have property for sale are about selling property. We found out that Martha (Robinson) and the family had grown up there before U.S. 30 was even present, so there’s a lot of history here. Martha is recently passed. She drove the site. We showed her the master plan, the VA. The Robinson family, obviously, were part of this, and I do want to give them a thank-you because none of this would have happened if they didn’t foresee what we’re trying to do there, because these projects always take longer than what people anticipate and they have been very patient.”
Skinner said they met with Innovcare and this developer two or three years ago.
“The conversation we had was, the city was not going to participate on any of the medical, but we would participate on the VA because the reality is the VA is providing services to veterans of Kosciusko County, reducing their travel time, increasing their accessibility, getting their healthcare speed increased - their ability to receive that care in a quicker time frame,” Skinner said.
“The location was important to us because both hospitals are readily accessible.”
Before making the motion to approve the MOU, Thallemer said, “This is a big win for our community and I know you guys have been persistent with it. I got in on just the very end of it, and I’m very glad you’re persistent. And I think where you landed was fabulous. I’m very supportive of this, just want to make sure we’re doing the right thing with our agreement, and it sounds like the agreement is pretty good, so ... I will be honored to make (that motion).”
Klondaris seconded the motion, which passed 5-0.
