Home Base has been in Southwest Florida for 13 years<\/a> but has never had a building to call its own. Employees have worked from home or borrowed space at Florida Gulf Coast University and other locations.\u00a0<\/p>\n\u201cIt\u2019s time to move to the next stage, a facility,\u201d said Armando Hernandez, senior director of National Network Operations & Strategy.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Home Base helps veterans in Southwest Florida, the Tampa area and the Panhandle, Hernandez said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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A singer performs the national anthem beside an honor guard during the opening ceremony of the Home Base Florida Golf Tournament on Nov. 3 at The Nest Golf Club in Bonita Springs.<\/p>\n
Evan Williams<\/p>\n
Florida has 1.5 million veterans, the third most in the U.S. behind California and Texas. Florida leads the country in the number of veteran suicides with 600 a year, Hernandez said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Southwest Florida has about 100,000 veterans, with about 60,000 living in Lee County.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Some of the space will be used for administrative offices, Hernandez said. A gym will include space for rehabilitation and physical therapy. There will be a kitchen for cooking demonstrations emphasizing health and wellness. Another area will be used for telehealth and counseling training, while an event space will host meetings of veteran organizations.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Tidewater resident Alan White, a veteran, said the community is in favor of the project.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Members of the planning and zoning board also spoke mostly in favor of the project. They liked the design and made only a few suggestions, including lightening the building\u2019s dark color and adding cover for an outdoor entertainment area.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Last month\u2019s presentation was only an informational meeting. No date was given for when Home Base will make its formal presentation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A rendering shows the proposed two-story, 26,000-square-foot Home Base Florida veterans wellness center in Estero. The facility is…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":420890,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[209,211,210,23766,4070,30013,3393,83547],"class_list":["post-420889","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cape-coral","tag-cape-coral","tag-cape-coral-headlines","tag-cape-coral-news","tag-home-base-florida","tag-mental-health","tag-rehabilitation","tag-veterans","tag-wellness-center"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/420889","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=420889"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/420889\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/420890"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=420889"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=420889"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=420889"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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