House OKs $400M Holyoke Soldiers’ Home rebuild bill
On 160-0 vote
Plans to build a new Holyoke Soldiers’ Home are moving forward after House lawmakers unanimously passed a $400 million bond bill to support the project.
House lawmakers engrossed the legislation in a rare 160- 0 vote on Thursday, 13 months after the coronavirus began its deadly creep through the existing soldiers’ home in Holyoke in an outbreak that ultimately killed 76 veterans. A 77th veteran living off-site died later in the year.
“Like so many aspects of life over this past year, this pandemic shone a light on a serious inequity,” state Rep. Patricia Duffy, D-Holyoke, said in her maiden speech. “By taking advantage of the attention that’s come to this. We are once again, as we have in the past, showing how to have a just recovery from this terrible pandemic.”
Duffy, a former union rep at the Holyoke Soldiers’ Home who also visited there as a legislative staffer and lives nearby, said the COVID-19 outbreak that ripped through the facility left her feeling “helpless and heartbroken.”
“By supporting this opportunity to reconstruct the soldiers’ home in Holyoke, we are investing not just a regional priority, which it is, but a statewide asset,” Duffy said.
State Rep. Danielle Gregoire, D-Marlboro, said a new facility will serve the state’s veterans “in the best way possible for decades to come.”
The Senate will now consider the bill as lawmakers race against the clock to secure a federal grant for the eight-story, 223- to 234-bed project, which is supported by the Holyoke Soldiers’ Home Coalition.
The Baker administration this week submitted its initial application to the Veterans Affairs State Home Construction Grant Program ahead of a Thursday deadline — marking the first step in the application process for a 65% federal reimbursement.
The final application is due Aug. 1 and requires design development that the state Division of Capital Asset Management and Maintenance can’t start until the Legislature authorizes funding. Missing that deadline means the state would have to wait at least another year to apply for federal aid for the project. “Given that a typical project of this nature could take between nine and nine-and-a-half months to design, any delay moving forward could prove detrimental,” Gregoire said.
If all goes well, construction on the new soldiers’ home would begin next summer and run through 2026, followed by the move to the new facility and demolition of the old one that could stretch into 2028.
But nonunion contractors have balked at the project labor agreement included in the legislation, which Gregoire said would help ensure the build was worked on by Massachusetts companies and women- and veteran-owned business.