The Department of Veteran Affairs (VA) has awarded a $23.38-million contract to Global Urban Enterprise to begin construction on the new Western New York National Veterans Cemetery.
Global Urban will be partnering with Syracuse-based Hueber-Breuer Construction, along with other subcontractors, to build the long-sought cemetery.
“The awarding of this $23 million contract to Ontario County-based Global Urban Enterprise clears the way for the construction of the long-sought and sorely-needed Western New York National Veterans Cemetery to, at long last, get underway,” U.S. Senator Charles Schumer said in a statement.
The 132- acre site on Indian Falls Rd. in Pembroke is located approximately 30 miles from Buffalo and 48 miles from Rochester. The cemetery will provide a fitting burial option to approximately 96,000 currently underserved veterans and family members living in Western New York.
The first $23-million phase of construction will create 4,000 gravesites, including roughly 2,500 gravesites for casket interments, and 1,500 in-ground sites for cremated remains.
Schumer has long fought to make the Western New York National Veterans Cemetery a reality. In January 2018, he called on the VA to complete the final acquisitions of two 60-acre and 77-acre land parcels in Pembroke, New York, and one month later announced the VA had done so.
Schumer said the establishment of the nation’s newest Veterans’ Cemetery in Western New York is a long-sought and well-deserved opportunity to honor the more than 96,000 veterans and family members in this region.
The veterans’ cemetery will be the first and only of its kind in the Buffalo-Rochester area and will save thousands of military families from having to travel more than 100 miles in some cases to visit their loved ones at what is now the closest Veterans’ Cemetery in Bath.
The first burials are expected to occur at the cemetery by next November/December.
