Share This Article
The Central Arkansas Veterans Healthcare System will break ground on a new Mountain Home VA clinic at 11 a.m. Friday, Oct. 2, on West End Way, a year and a half after veterans packed a Baxter County courtroom to demand a permanent facility.
CAVHS announced the ceremony Tuesday. The clinic will rise in the West End development off Highway 62 West, which is already home to the newest Harps grocery store and several banks, with a car wash now under construction nearby. Event and visitor parking will be marked the day of the ceremony.
In its announcement, CAVHS said the new clinic will offer enhanced and expanded clinical services, including some that have never been available to veterans in the Twin Lakes area. The agency said the building will give both veterans and staff a larger, more modern space than the clinic they use now.
That clinic is a contract-based Community Based Outpatient Clinic in Twin Lakes Plaza on Highway 62 East. For years it has drawn complaints from veterans about space, staffing and wait times.
Those frustrations boiled over in March 2025, when CAVHS held a town hall in Court Room 1 of the Baxter County Courthouse. Veterans filled the room, and one called out that every other community in Arkansas had already moved from a contract clinic to a permanent VA facility. “We need a permanent VA facility, not a contract,” he said.
Medical center director Michael Moore told the crowd the agency was working on it, but he warned the process would not be quick. “In all honesty, it’s going to take a few years,” Moore said, pointing to the leasing steps the VA had to work through before anything could be built.
The first local sign that the project was moving came July 16, when the Mountain Home City Council voted unanimously to rezone Lot 2D in the West End Phase I subdivision from Commercial C-2 to Commercial C-2(C). The council attached an emergency clause so the ordinance took effect immediately.
Attorney Ted Sanders presented the request on behalf of property owner Gregory and Magness Properties LLC. He told the council the sale hinged on the vote, because the buyer could not close on the land until the rezoning was final, and he asked for the emergency clause so construction could start without waiting the usual 30 days for an ordinance to take effect.
“The proposed purpose of this is a VA clinic, and it’s going to be a good-size facility,” Sanders said.
Sanders told the council the new building would replace the clinic veterans use now, and that the move was meant to better serve them. He said C-2(C) was the proper zoning for a medical facility of that size, and that the clinic “certainly will be a big addition to that side of town.”
Planning Director Arnold Knox, who had reviewed the plans, told the council the building would take up “30 or 40 rooms.” City officials said they chose the C-2(C) designation so the clinic would not have to come back to the council for another rezoning as it grows.
The Planning Commission recommended the change after a public hearing, and no formal objections were recorded.
CAVHS has not released a construction timeline or an opening date for the new clinic. The Observer will update this story as more details become available.
