PRESTON — In the summer of 2023, state veterans homes in three Minnesota cities will begin welcoming residents. Between Preston, Bemidji and Montevideo, the new homes will serve nearly 200 veteran residents and infuse those local economies with hundreds of jobs. The impact on Preston, population 1,322, is expected to be significant.
"I think each department within the city is addressing it individually," said Ryan Throckmorton, Preston city administrator. "How each department can interact with the home once it's open, such as the library or EMS, police department. ... I think our businesses are looking into it as well (with) potential growth."
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The Preston Veterans Home, located at 1112 Overlook Drive, is situated at the top of a hill in Fillmore County's seat. Construction is underway and on schedule for a June 2023 opening, said Dave Dunn, director of the Preston Veterans Home. Dunn, an Air Force veteran, stepped into his new role in November with 20 years of experience as a licensed nursing home administrator.
"It is a 54-bed facility, all private rooms with a private bathroom," Dunn said. "We are going to start with 20 residents, and once we get those 20 residents in, then we have to wait to get surveyed. ... Once our survey has passed, then we will slowly start filling up the building."
So far, Dunn said the Minnesota Department of Veterans Affairs has 50 veterans and three non-veterans on the facility's waiting list. Potential residents must meet the requirements to live in a skilled nursing facility and also be an honorably discharged military veteran.
Workers, of course, will follow those new residents to town. At full caliber, the home will employ 120 full- and part-time employees, equivalent to about 9% of Preston's population.
More jobs means a heightened need for housing, something the city of Preston had anticipated before it had been chosen as a future veterans home site. In 2018, Preston's Economic Development Authority completed a housing study in response to anticipated county-wide population growth over the next several years, fueled in part by Destination Medical Center's economic influence.
"We found out that a significant percent of the people who worked in Preston lived elsewhere," Jon DeVries, EDA member, said of the 2018 Preston Housing Study. "That was an important finding, that we had a lot of people who had wanted to live here because of the proximity to their jobs ... but not been able to find housing that suited them."
DeVries added that Preston, like many other cities surrounding Rochester, had become more of a "function of the Rochester labor market," with a significant number of residents commuting to Rochester for work.
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"Here, we had an interesting situation where employment had grown and (city) population had decreased, telling us a picture of housing shortage," DeVries said.
To follow the city's opportunity scenario for population growth by 2030, Preston would have to add 167 housing units by then, according to the report.
And then came the Preston Veterans Home.
"We found out about the VA home not that long after this report was done, and we actually already had identified an initial eight to 10 sites," DeVries said.
Since the report, DeVries estimated that 15 to 20 new housing units in Preston are complete, in construction or in their final planning stages, and there are more lots available for developers. It's a slow process, he said, but progress is underway.
Dunn said he believes the city can handle the influx of employees, visitors and business traffic that will come along with the veterans home.
"The community of Preston has really wrapped their arms around this, and in the short amount of time that I've been working out of the office there in town, the sense from talking with community members is they're very, very excited to have this facility in Preston," Dunn said. "I don't think there's going to be an issue with housing."
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