A series of five projects at the Waco VA campus, each costing $9.8 million, for a total of $49 million, were funded with the passage of the federal omnibus spending bill last year. U.S. Rep. Chet Edwards, D-Waco, chairman of the House appropriations subcommittee over VA spending, shepherded a historic $11.8 billion increase in veterans spending through Congress last year, enabling the Waco projects to receive funding.

The projects include:

* Creating the Center of Excellence for Research on Returning War Veterans: Space in the mostly vacant Building 93 will be renovated for the new mental health research center, including offices and labs.

* Relocating and expanding the Blind Rehabilitation Unit. The program will be relocated to Building 9, where it can be expanded to 30 beds. The new unit will include rehabilitation space for vision and life skills, as well as computer and manual skills training.

* Expanding and enhancing mental health treatment. The money will be used for existing inpatient acute, intermediate and long-term psychiatry at either Building 7 or Building 8.

* Renovating long-term care facilities and enhancing rehabilitative facilities, including a pool.

* Repairing and replacing critical infrastructure needed to support the campus and new programs. The project includes building a new central laundry facility for Central and North Texas.

The Bush administration requested $233.4 million for so-called "minor construction" projects, which cost $10 million or less, in its 2008 fiscal year budget. But Edwards added another $397.1 million for such projects across the country, enabling the enhancements at the Waco VA to move forward.

Edwards said the projects were designed to cost less than $10 million each so the VA would not have to seek congressional authorization, which could have taken up to an additional two or three years to receive.

"These expansions will improve medical services for veterans in Central Texas and throughout the country who use the Waco VA hospital," he said at the time of the announcement in February.

Most of the projects are aimed at enhancing existing programs at the Waco VA. But the mental health Center of Excellence is a new program that VA officials began developing in August. The center will study and treat the so-called "big four" mental health problems afflicting soldiers returning from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan: post-traumatic stress disorder, traumatic brain injury, depression and substance abuse.

So far, the new research center has operated in temporary work space in a Waco VA building shared by the blind rehabilitation program.

Bruce Gordon, director of the Central Texas Veterans Health Care System, which oversees the Waco VA, said earlier this year that the funding was welcome news for veterans and the community.

"I do believe there is much more in store, but this is the first real evidence of projects on the horizon that are just going to be terrific up there," he said. "It's a good sign to the veterans that we care about them, that we are serious about our efforts to rebuild that campus. We're just very excited."

The funded projects are seen as the first step in a larger initiative to redevelop and modernize the entire VA campus, he said. In a few years, local VA officials want to pursue larger scale projects, including the consolidation of outpatient services in the original hospital building near the medical center's main entrance.

The consolidation project, which would gut and nearly double in size the original hospital building, would cost just less than $100 million and require congressional authorization, Gordon said. The VA will likely wait until the 2010 fiscal year to seek such approval, he said.

But before larger projects can move forward, the VA needed this initial funding installment to take care of infrastructure issues at the medical center, Gordon said.

The hospital campus's fate has changed dramatically since December 2006, when national VA Secretary Jim Nicholson announced it would remain open after facing a threat of closure for more than three years. Edwards said his dream for the Waco VA is for it to become a "one-stop shop" for veteran services.

"I think this is the beginning, not of the end of the expansion of the Waco VA and the services it provides to veterans," he said.