LEWISTON — Workers will pause their blasting on ledge beside the Maine Turnpike on Friday so leaders can mark the ceremonial groundbreaking of a $20 million, 30,000-square-foot veterans’ clinic.

“It means we won’t have to travel way up to Togus as much,” said Bert Dutil, a Korean War veteran. He has worked for seven years to bring the clinic to Lewiston-Auburn.

Eye exams, hearing tests, meetings with cardiac and pulmonary specialists and mental health care — services once confined to the Togus VA Medical Center outside Augusta — will be offered at 15 Challenger Drive when the clinic opens.

Construction is due to be completed by December, said Ryan Lilly, associate director of the Togus center.

The Department of Veterans Affairs originally intended the Lewiston clinic to be built in the Brunswick area, but Jerry DeWitt, Ken St. Amand and Dutil, all of Lewiston, lobbied the VA and Maine’s congressional delegation to bring the clinic here, instead.

“Jerry asked, ‘What’s the matter with Lewiston-Auburn?'” Dutil said. DeWitt created a computer slide show illustrating the numbers of veterans in the cities and surrounding towns. The men took the presentation to the Togus director and began collecting signatures. Then, they started lobbying Maine’s congressional delegation for help.

The delegation, particularly Rep. Michael Michaud, D-Maine, championed the effort, DeWitt said.

“We didn’t have an idea what we were getting into,” he said Thursday. He didn’t expect the effort to take seven years.

Michaud announced this past fall that construction plans were completed and the money was approved. Wisconsin-based builder CD Smith Construction, which finished a Bangor clinic in the fall, was hired to build the Lewiston clinic.

The deal calls for the building to be owned by CD Smith and leased to the VA for 20 years.

The community-based outpatient clinic will employ about 30 people when it opens and as many as 60 people within a few years, Lilly said. The one-story facility will join a network of eight clinics in Bangor, Calais, Caribou, Fort Kent, Houlton, Lincoln, Rumford and Saco.

Michaud had planned to attend Friday’s groundbreaking ceremony, scheduled for 11 a.m. However, budget work is keeping the congressman in Washington, spokesman Ed Gilman said.

“I know he really wanted to be there,” Gilman said.

“I’ve been proud to work with the many dedicated area veterans to push for this (clinic’s) completion,” Michaud said in a prepared statement.”This facility, and its creation, really belongs to them.”

To Dutil, the closeness of the new clinic will mean better health for some.

Many elderly veterans have a tough time getting to Togus. The Disabled American Veterans service runs a van there, but because several people are driven to appointments, taking the van can often mean committing a full day to something as simple as a 15-minute doctor’s appointment.

In other cases, patients must rely on relatives for rides. It can be an inconvenience, Dutil said.

“(The relatives) have to work,” he said. “And if you miss an appointment, it can take months to schedule another one.”

Hoping to meet some of the demand, the VA opened a temporary clinic on Minot Avenue in Auburn. It has a staff of four and it can help only a fraction of the people the new clinic is designed to help, Lilly said. 

In 2012, the Lewiston location is expected to treat an estimated 6,000 veterans, he said.

Dutil and DeWitt hope to grab shovels at Friday’s ceremony.

“We’re finally going to dig some dirt,” DeWitt said.

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