The Roanoke Times | File March

Tommy Rhodes dances with a worker at the Adult Care Center located at the VA Medical Center. Rhodes has dementia and attends the program almost daily while his wife works.

The Adult Care Center of Roanoke Valley broke ground Monday on a $1 million facility in Salem that will allow it to expand services to area elderly and disabled adults.

Plans for the building, due to be completed next spring, call for the consolidation of the two adult day-care centers, one on Williamson Road and the other at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Salem. The new 7,700-square-foot center will be located at 2300 Roanoke Blvd., across from the entrance to the Virginia Veterans Care Center.

"With the baby boomers coming along in the future, we think we'll see a lot more people using adult care services," Executive Director Sue Nutter said. By 2030, nearly one in four people in the Roanoke and New River valley regions will be 65 or older.

Daytime adult care can be a godsend to working caregivers who want to keep their loved ones at home. In addition to the usual activities, supervision and health monitoring, the new facility will offer bathing/showering and beauty/barber services.

Whereas the current centers serve an average of 48 people per day, the new center will serve 70.

Groundbreaking had been planned for next year, after fundraising was completed, but a glitch occurred when VA officials informed Nutter they needed the current space, located in the first floor of Building 76 of the VA Medical Center. The Adult Care Center's lease, revocable with 90 days' notice, was expiring after 17 years, Nutter said, so the center stepped up its construction schedule and borrowed the money instead.

"The VA needs to expand its patient services, so I understand the need for us to move," Nutter said. "But it's been stressful because we really only wanted to move everybody one time. For people with dementia especially, it can be hard to adjust to a new space."

In a letter written to Nutter, VA Director John Patrick explained that renovations of current buildings will soon be under way to "address mental health patient privacy and security concerns, medical and surgical clinic expansion needs and other veteran health care needs."

To begin the projects, the VA needs temporary space for the mental health inpatients who "are currently occupying space where construction will soon begin," Patrick added.

Beginning as soon as Aug. 1, both adult-care centers will relocate to the social hall of St. Elias Maronite Catholic Church, at 4730 Cove Road N.W., until the new building is open. Letters informing families of the interim move went out Friday.

Denise Bryant's 52-year-old brain-injured husband has attended the Williamson Road center since February. The Hollins-area caregiver said she doesn't think having to move her husband twice will disrupt their routine. "But it could upset some of those who don't do well with change," she said.

Bryant praised the center "for allowing me to work; it's really the only option I have" -- short of paying $16 to $18 an hour for in-home personal care.

The nonprofit center is a United Way agency that accepts Medicaid participants and military veterans who qualify for subsidies. Its private-pay day rate is $53.50, but there are scholarships available, and few participants pay full price.

With the stepped-up construction schedule, Nutter's board will soon embark on a fundraising campaign, though she concedes that "times are hard and a lots of people are raising money."

Awestruck by the money raised for the soon-to-open Taubman Museum of Art in downtown Roanoke, she marveled, "66 million dollars ... and all I want is one [million]!"

On the Net: adultcarecenterofroanoke.org