The Veterans Affairs Outpatient Center Kearny Mesa is the newest hospital annex building in the VA Healthcare system. The outpatient clinic will serve the local veteran community and provide relief from the populated La Jolla campus just ten miles west of the new campus. The existing building, located on Aero Drive, was formerly a Bank of America vault guarding as much as $1 billion in cash and coin. A bulletproof guard tower, bulletproof interior holding rooms and highly secure money vaults once occupied the existing space. To retrofit a concrete bunker into an outpatient center was no easy task for the project team. The building is one of the largest medical office leases ever in San Diego County. Protea Properties worked with the Veterans Administration to sign a 20-year lease for the existing space. The Outpatient Center is the first of its kind for Southern California.

The project consisted of reconstructing an existing 100,000 SF Bank of America building into a state-of-the-art Outpatient Center for the Veterans Affairs by expanding the building 25,000 SF. Adjacent to the facility is a new poured-in-place 4-story, 395 stall parking garage.

The Outpatient Center houses an array of medical services including dental, physical therapy, women’s health, prosthetics, mental health, radiology, eye clinic, pathology and audiology.