BANGOR – The Maine Veterans Home will begin a $3.3 million expansion of its Hogan Road facility, adding 30 residential care beds to the 6-year-old nursing home, according to officials there.

“We definitely believe there’s a need there,” said chief financial officer Bob St. Pierre, adding that nearly identical expansions had begun or were planned for three of the organization’s other four homes throughout the state. “We intend on filling [the beds].”

Construction of the new 17,000-square-foot wing will begin this spring, with the wing scheduled to open in June 2003, according to Judy Young, administrator of the 120-bed Bangor home for veterans, their spouses, widows or widowers and gold star parents.

The new residential beds in Bangor will be dedicated to clients with Alzheimer’s disease, Young said.

Construction crews already have broken ground on another 30-bed expansion at the Maine Veterans Home in Scarborough. Similar expansions are planned at facilities in Augusta and Caribou in coming years, St. Pierre said.

The expansions are being funded in large part through construction grants from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, St. Pierre said, noting that Maine Veterans Homes would finance about one-third of the cost.

Maine Veterans Homes, created by the Legislature in 1977, provides 490 beds for Maine veterans in five locations: Augusta, Bangor, Caribou, Scarborough and South Paris.

Because the Maine Department of Human Services, which licenses all nursing homes in the state, is not granting any new residential care beds, Maine Veterans Homes purchased the rights to the additional 120 beds needed for the expansion from other nursing homes throughout the state, St. Pierre said.