BANGOR — Weather has been a help and a hindrance to the construction of the veterans home on a hilltop overlooking the Penobscot River.

While early autumn torrential rains slowed progress at the muddied construction site, the recent unseasonably warm temperatures have allowed work to move forward almost on schedule.

“We’ve had our ups and downs,” said Jefferson Ackor, the chief executive officer of Maine Veterans Homes.

“We’re fairly close to schedule. If the weather holds, we’ll be able to catch up,” the director said Thursday.

Construction of the 120-bed facility on the campus of the Bangor Mental Health Institute is scheduled to be completed by July 1, 1995, according to Ackor. If all goes according to plan, the $9 million facility will be open to house veterans by Sept. 1, 1995, he added.

Ackor praised the beautiful vistas from the hilltop location on the corner of State Street and Hogan Road, but complained that this fall’s downpours turned the site into the “great dismal swamp.”

The biggest problem, the director said, was torrential rains that turned the construction site, and its unpaved access road, into a slippery, muddy mess. He said crews are putting down a base coat for the paved access road that soon will be complete. With a paved road, movement of people and equipment will be less of a problem, Ackor said.

He said he had to laugh because Maine Veterans Homes is building two homes — one in Bangor and another in South Paris. While Bangor’s site is full of claylike mud, the South Paris location is full of sand that simply absorbs any rainwater.

“I’d like to give some of the conditions in South Paris to Bangor,” he said with a laugh.

The home in South Paris, which will house 90 veterans, is half complete while Bangor’s is 45 percent complete, Ackor said.

He said crews plan to work through the winter, but it “depends on the climate we are dealt.”

Ackor said he will know a lot more about the project’s status at the first of the new year, when he will begin to hire people to staff the new home. About 120 people will be hired as the home gets into full swing, he said.

The 120-bed home will have 40 private rooms for veterans with special needs, such as emotional and behavioral problems. The remaining 80 beds will be of the regular nursing home variety.

Ackor said the number of veterans in the state far exceeds the number of nursing home beds available to the aging population. He estimated there are more than 160,000 veterans in Maine. The 490 beds that will be available to those veterans “is not exactly overkill,” Ackor said.

Maine Veterans Homes operates facilities in Caribou, Augusta and Scarborough in addition to the two under construction.