VA Outpatient Clinic to Be Built in Civic Center

Ground breaking will be held Friday for the $45-million Veterans Administration outpatient clinic at Temple and Alameda streets, on the eastern edge of the Los Angeles Civic Center. It is scheduled for completion in the summer of 1992.

The facility will become part of the complex that includes a new Federal Courts Building and Metropolitan Detention Center.

The 220,000-square-foot clinic will serve 900 patients a day and house 450 employees including a staff of 55 physicians, 20 registered nurses and 40 trainees.

The five-story building, with 525 parking spaces, will replace the VA Outpatient Clinic at 425 S. Hill St. and will provide a wide range of primary-care facilities and specialty clinics. Granite will be used as an exterior building material in horizontal bands to tie in with the architecture of existing Federal buildings.

The paved auto courtyard and entry of the outpatient clinic building will tie in with a series of gardens throughout the project, consisting of parking terraces, a roof garden and interior atrium.

Pedestrian access will be reinforced along Temple Street with an arcade connecting the major entry with the drug dependency treatment clinic. The aging will have their own center and all areas of the clinic will be accessible to the handicapped.

Bobrow/Thomas & Associates of Los Angeles is the architect and planner. The architectural team consists of Michael L. Bobrow, partner for design; Julia Thomas, partner for planning; Robert Wielage, principal for architecture and Robert Rawski, project architect. J. W. Bateson of Dallas, is the general contractor.

Consultants working with the team are Cygna Consulting Engineers, structural; Hayakawa Associates, mechanical/electrical; Emmet L. Wemple & Associates, landscape; Rogoway/Borkovetz Associates, civil; LeRoy Crandall & Associates, geotechnical/subsurface investigator, and Hanscomb Associates, cost estimators.