N.O. crowd protests VA hospital site

• By ALLEN M. JOHNSON JR.
• New Orleans bureau
• Published: Aug 13, 2008 - UPDATED: 12:05 a.m.

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NEW ORLEANS — More than 200 people filled a Mid-City church Monday night for an emotion-charged hearing on where to rebuild a new Veteran’s Affairs hospital.

“Why would the city want to displace hundreds of residents who are struggling to rebuild their community, and to destroy their homes — in a city where housing is so scarce?” Elizabeth S. Merritt told the site selection panel. “We’re mystified.”

Merritt, an attorney for the nonprofit National Trust for Historic Preservation at Washington, D.C., said the national organization of preservationists opposes a 34-acre hospital development offer made to the VA by Mayor Ray Nagin last year.

The new 200-bed VA facility would share a total of 71 acres with a new LSU-operated 424-bed hospital, designed to replace Charity Hospital. 

However, Dr. Michael Kaiser, chief medical officer for LSU Health Care Services, argued that “co-location” of hospitals is best for operations, whether for clinic visits or emergencies.

“There can be no doubt that the benefits far outweigh the impacts,” Kaiser said of the LSU/VA proposal.

Both Charity and the old VA facility, on 6.6 acres of downtown property near City Hall, were heavily damaged by Katrina’s flood waters. The new VA hospital would require approximately 1 million gross square feet, 140 hospital beds, 60 nursing beds, and 410,000 outpatient visits a year — up from 220,000 annual visits, pre-Katrina, records show.

Signed on Nov. 19, Nagin’s memorandum of understanding with the VA called for the city’s expropriation or removal of some 200 homes in a historic district of Lower Mid-City, with the exception of the old Dixie Brewery on Tulane Avenue. 

The agreement also infuriated many residents, who decried the lack of public hearings before Nagin signed the agreement. VA officials reportedly said Tuesday that they would rewrite the memorandum with the city.

At Monday’s hearing, Don Orndoff, director of the VA’s office of Facilities and Construction Management and Planning, got a dose of the public suspicion that typically accompanies government-backed development projects in many of the city’s neighborhoods.

“I assure you, (the hearing) is not a ‘sham,’ ” Orndoff replied to questioners of the site selection panel.

Meanwhile, the National Trust announced support for a grass-roots proposal that would relocate the VA facility to a 39.8-acre campus on the vacant Lindy Boggs Medical Center in Mid-City. 

Neighborhood residents say the “Lindy Boggs site” is ready for sale by Victory Real Estate Investment.