Napa Valley veterans home to get $269M skilled-nursing facility

The California Department of General Services plans to construct a $269 million, 240-bed skilled nursing and memory care center on the 137-year-old Yountville Veterans Home of California campus in Napa Valley.

Ground breaking is expected this month, and completion is scheduled for December 2023.

The design-build contract was awarded to San Carlos-based Rudolph and Sletten. It is a subsidiary of the Tutor Perini Corporation (NYSE: TPC), a civil, building and specialty construction company with headquarters in Los Angeles.

The Yountville veterans home project is being built for the California Department of Veterans Affairs (CalVet). New hires for the facility are expected to be 80–100, supplementing 950 workers already employed on the campus.

This veterans home offers several levels of care including independent living, intermediate nursing care, memory care, outpatient clinic, residential, care-assisted living and skilled nursing care.

The new 300,000-square-foot, five-story facility will replace and combine three existing buildings on 9 of the campus’ 615 acres, in a corner of the property behind Eisenhower Hall and the Holderman Building that’s the present home of the skilled-nursing center. It will provide long-term care to about 1,000 aged or disabled veterans, including support for residents with dementia, Alzheimer’s disease and traumatic brain injuries.

When first announcing the new center as part of a master campus plan in April 2019, former Yountville Veterans Home Administrator Fred Just said, “We definitely needed a new building, since it would have been more expensive to renovate older facilities than to build a new one.”

Later that year on Oct. 7, Gov. Gavin Newsom appointed Lisa Peake campus administrator after she retired as an Army colonel after 33 years of military service.

“We are very excited for the contract to be awarded for our new Skilled Nursing Facility,” Peake said in a statement. “This state-of-the-art facility will continue CalVet’s mission to provide outstanding care for California’s veterans and their eligible spouses and domestic partners well into the future. The project has been a long time in the making and with support from the state and the U.S. Department of Veteran’s Affairs, we are thrilled to be moving on to the next phase.”

The center’s design will blend with the Spanish mission historic architectural style seen in existing structures. It will include main and satellite kitchens, dining rooms, exam rooms, nurses’ stations, a pharmacy, laundry facilities, resident outdoor spaces, parking, roadways and other site improvements, according to a press release issued May 3 by Jorge Casado, VP investor relations and corporate communications for TPC.

Dave Hunt, AIA, is Southern California health practice leader at CannonDesign, and principal in charge of the Yountville project.

“We incorporated more than 20 strategies that improve health outcomes, safety and staff well-being, informed by the science of gerontology, wayfinding and evidence-based design when creating concepts included in this center’s architecture and living spaces,” Hunt said.

He said planning meetings were also held with owners of several veteran-owned companies to gather their input on how to design a nurturing environment.

“Adding these ideas with the combined experiences of our designers and engineers has created a community with a comfortable, stress-free, home-like setting that will help those living with diminished physical and neurocognitive abilities not just survive, but thrive,” Hunt said.

Akanksha Pande is senior vice president for health care at CannonDesign, and project leader for Yountville.

“It will be a place where bedrooms really look like bedrooms with each opening up to living rooms and with access to kitchenettes where residents can prepare their own meals,” Pande said. “They can also choose to go to a communal dining room enhanced with cross-laminated timber accents that spills into an outdoor garden through a porte cocheire (covered entrance).”

Every floor will offer terrace views of Napa Valley. The campus has a number of recreational and exercise and fitness facilities, a library, creative arts center and outdoor activity areas including east and west gardens, meditation space and a multi-faith chapel. In addition, there is a short nine-hole golf course, baseball stadium and the Lincoln Theater for the Performing Arts.

A memorial promenade along an enclosed corridor between buildings honors veterans from every war. A memorial garden has plaques describing all conflicts back to the Civil War and includes trees planted by veterans who fought in each.

Safety in the age of COVID-19 is highly correlated to the quality of the ventilation system.

“We evaluated multiple HVAC systems resulting in a superior radiant heating and air displacement HVAC system that improves thermal comfort and health outcomes with increased fresh air exchanges, and one that operates almost silently while almost eliminating maintenance disruptions and improving energy efficiency,” Hunt said.

The primary building structural system is precast, prefabricated concrete, which Hunt said is the most durable and low-maintenance material. It is also fire-resistant and suitable for a building designed to last 50-plus years. It requires no painting and is impervious to water damage. Mansard tile roofs provide shading above the single-ply roof below protecting it from ultraviolet exposure while ensuring a long useful life.

He said the thermal mass of the precast concrete design creates an extremely stable interior environment by dampening the effect of hot days and dramatically reducing cooling loads, using Napa Valley’s cool coastal evenings to release stored energy from the concrete.

“Through the enhanced energy efficiency of the design and other sustainable features, the requirements for LEED Gold certification have been met,” Hunt said. “This integrated approach also allowed us to build on our green environmental stewardship strategies, while improving the quality of life and experience for the residents.”