Turner-Long Construction, Inc. has been selected to be the general contractor for the Friendship Retirement Community’s new expansion of it’s rehabilitation services in Roanoke County.

The company said Thursday that work will begin soon on Friendship Health and Rehab Center South located at 5647 Starkey Road. The new $13 million, 73,000 square foot facility will offer 120 private rooms. A groundbreaking ceremony will be held at 3 p.m., Sat. Aug. 2, and will include remarks from Virginia Sen. Mark Warner.

According to the company, demand for on-site, patient rehabilitation has outgrown Friendship’s 373 beds available in the company’s current space on Hershberger Road, already the largest in Virginia. “This new facility will give us the room we need to better serve our patients,” said Sue Devine, administrator at Friendship Health & Rehab. “So many can’t wait to get out of a hospital setting, and while this will still be an inpatient facility, we want to help those acute care patients make quick recoveries so that they can go home sooner and restart their lives.”

Friendship Health and Rehab offers skilled and immediate nursing care, sub-acute care, inpatient physical, speech and occupational rehabilitation, memory care, psychiatry and palliative care.

Construction is expected to take about 18 months, with completion in the fall of 2015.

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