DOWAGIAC — Construction workers milled about outside the Pokagon Health Services building Monday morning, driving excavators and skid steer loaders along a flat piece of land.

“This whole place is a construction zone right now,” said Paige Risser, director of communications for the Pokagon Band, as she looked out the window of the contrastingly calm PHS building. “But things are coming along fast. I feel like there has been a lot of progress.”

The Pokagon Band of Potawatomi Indians’ Rodger’s Lake campus will soon be home to two new facilities. The tribe recently broke ground on an extension to Pokagon Health Services and a new Justice Center that will house Tribal Court and the Tribal Police Department. To add to the construction, the Pokagon Band is also reconfiguring its water system from multiple wells to a centralized water system, which tribal officials say will aid the Pokagon Band’s growth. The total cost of all three projects is $25 million.

The expansion to the PHS building has been planned since before the building opened in 2014, according to Risser and Government Manager Jason Wesaw. Calling it “phase two,” they said the expansion will add space for dental and behavioral health services, a family activities center and a café. Both the behavioral health and dental departments will double from six offices to 12 offices under the expansion, which will add more than 10,000 square feet to the space.

“This way, we will be able to serve all our patients,” Wesaw said. “Since building [the PHS building], we have had a tremendous amount of growth. … We started out with about 700 patients, and now we have 2,800 patients registered, so it has over tripled.”

That growth in all aspects of tribal life is why now was the right time to go forward with the construction project for PHS and the Justice Center, Risser said.

“Not only has our quality of care improved, but people are moving back to the area,” she said. “They are seeing the job opportunities, the services the government provides to the community and they want to be involved, learn the language and be part of the culture.”

The new tribal Justice Center is the other branch of the construction project. The new 23,000 square-foot facility will house both Tribal Court and the Tribal Police. The design of the center will feature interior and exterior designs more culturally appropriate for traditional peacemaking and native justice proceedings.

“A new justice center has been a need for a long time,” Wesaw said. “And now is just the right time.”

An advantage to the new justice center is that it will move the Tribal Police Department from where it currently sits on M-51 onto the Pokagon Band’s Rodger’s Lake campus.

“It made sense for us in terms of safety, and it gives us the opportunity to be streamlined as we build here at the campus,” he said. “It will be here on tribal land, which is a big part of bringing them, as we have that sovereignty. To have them on the reservation will be great.”

Knowing where the tribal government has come from, Wesaw said he is proud that the Pokagon Band is able to expand and grow with the construction project. In the past, the tribal government was housed in several modular buildings across the campus, none of which were built for the purposes they were being used for. The growth the tribe has experienced is inspiring the construction project, he added.

“This is very exciting for us,” he said. “It’s exciting that we are in the place where we are able to do this and provide these things for our citizens.”

The construction project is scheduled to be completed in 11 months, a deadline Wesaw said he is confident he will meet.

“This time next year, we will be giving tours of the new facility,” he said. “That’s the plan.”