New Ocean County VA Clinic Project Delayed Again

BRICK, NJ — Plans to build a new veterans clinic in Ocean County have been set back once more, after the contract to build it was canceled by the Department of Veterans Affairs.

Officials in Brick and Toms River have been waiting eagerly for an announcement of the site, which is expected to serve the largest veterans population in New Jersey and replace the overwhelmed James J. Howard Outpatient Clinic.

That announcement had been anticipated to happen sometime this year.

The cancellation of the contract solicitation, which was announced on the federal contracting website on Friday, appears to mean the process must start from scratch. A request for comment and additional information from VA officials on Friday evening was not immediately returned.

U.S. Rep. Andy Kim, who represents the Third District and sits on the House's Veterans Affairs Committee, was outraged at cancellation.

"This is an absolute failure on the part of the VA, and New Jersey’s veterans deserve better," Kim said in a statement. "They deserve immediate solutions."

"Veterans across Ocean County have been underserved for years, and to have to wait is wholly unacceptable," Kim said. "The VA must come forward with a full public explanation of why this process failed, what they will do immediately to increase access and improve health care services for our veterans, and what they will do to ensure this process does not fail again."

The Howard clinic, which opened in 1991, handles 400 scheduled appointments a day plus walk-ins for veterans seeking treatment at the property off Jack Martin Boulevard and Route 70. It initially was expected to serve roughly 5,000 veterans. But in the interceding years, the veteran population in Ocean and Monmouth has skyrocketed.

Parking at the clinic has been beyond inadequate for a few years, with veterans seeking treatment forced to park along the driveway of the clinic or even a quarter-mile down the road at Ocean Medical Center.

Plans for a new clinic were approved as a result of changes approved under the Veterans Access, Choice, and Accountability Act of 2014. That legislation resulted from extensive reports on serious failings of the VA in treating veterans, from extreme delays in access to care to sorely inadequate facilities.

The process of bidding the project started in 2016, and was scrapped once before the VA began seeking bids for a new site in 2018.

Brick Township Mayor John G. Ducey and Toms River Mayor Maurice B. Hill both expressed disappointment in yet another delay in the project, which both towns have been vying to host.

"This project means so much to the veterans," Ducey said. "It's frustrating and disappointing that they are starting from square one."

He remains hopeful that the new clinic would be built in Brick, on a 10-acre triangle of land bound by Jack Martin Boulevard, Route 88 and Burrsville Road that is less than a quarter-mile from Ocean Medical Center and not far from the Garden State Parkway.

"It was so close to being decided," said Hill, who has been pushing for the new clinic to be sited on a parcel at Caudina and Hooper avenues, not from the Ocean County Senior Services offices and the Ocean County Mall.

"I still think that's good site," Hill said. "I wish they had proceeded with it. It's unfair to the veterans of Ocean County" that it's being delayed again.

The preliminary plan envisions a state-of-the-art clinic with 68,000 square feet of space within the building, and 480 parking spaces, offering services from primary care and mental health to specialty clinics for dentistry, women's health, physical therapy, spinal cord injuries and more.

Last fall, developer Kamson Corp. received approval from the Brick Township Planning Board of a preliminary site plan on a 75,000-square-foot medical building at the Jack Martin Boulevard triangle, setting off speculation that Brick would be awarded the clinic, but VA officials said nothing had been decided.

Toms River officials cleared the way for the clinic to be sited on Hooper Avenue near Caudina Avenue by rezoning the property, in hopes of enticing the VA to the site.

Efforts to get the project approved and announced have been ongoing since former U.S. Rep. Tom MacArthur was representing the district.

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