Andy Figorski stands across the street from a dilapidated, gray, prefab office complex known as Building 47. Tucked away in the eastern corner of the sprawling Veterans Affairs Medical Center campus in Salt Lake City, it might not look like much to most people.

But from where Figorski stands, it could be the most beautiful building in the world.

"It's been a second chance and a social gathering place," said Figorski, a veteran of the Iraq war who returned from his 2006 combat tour with traumatic brain injuries and post-traumatic stress disorder. "It's been a chance to reclaim a lot of what war takes from you."

But Building 47 is falling apart. On frigid mornings, like this one, it can be an icebox in one room and a furnace in the next. Its walls are sagging. Its floors creak. So it's time to tear it down.

In a brief Wednesday morning ceremony, Figorski stood alongside other veterans and their advocates, gold-plated shovel in hand, and turned the snow-covered dirt by his feet before lifting the tool above his head with a broad smile. Before the wrecking balls take away the building where Figorski started to piece together his life, a new 38,000-square-foot structure will have risen across the street.

With three floors, 95 consultation rooms and numerous group and individual therapy spaces, the new mental health outpatient clinic will be a more suitable space for the more than 10,000 veterans that are seen by mental health providers here, every year.

Meanwhile, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are producing tens of thousands of new combat veterans each year. More than a third are expected to return home with mental health problems.

"There are no signs that demands for mental health services are decreasing," said Scott Hill, chief of Mental Health services at the Salt Lake VA medical center.

Hill said the VA has made a commitment not to leave any of those veterans behind, and "this building will be a visible sign of that commitment."

Though it will be a permanent structure with large windows overlooking a panoramic view of the Salt Lake valley, the new building might not look like much to most people, either.

But where others might see brick and mortar, Figorski said he'll see something else: "sanctuary."

mlaplante@sltrib.com