Too good for mothballs
Making the Canandaigua VA more useful for
veterans and others in the community may hold the key to its survival.
By JULIE
SHERWOOD / jsherwood@mpnewspapers.com
CANANDAIGUA - If
the Canandaigua VA Medical Center is to remain open, viable uses may have to be
found for its more than 100,000 square feet of unused space. 
With possibilities
ranging from commercial to medical to educational, not everyone agrees on what
type of uses would be appropriate. Indeed, not everyone agrees that non-veteran
services should even be part of the equation.
Veterans
advocate Ralph Calabrese said at a meeting of the We Care Committee last week
that he is concerned about outside businesses setting up shop at the VA. The
committee is a coalition of community and business leaders focused on keeping
the Canandaigua VA open and proposing uses for vacant space on the 163-acre
campus.
"Privatizing
means business, and business means who has the most
bucks," said the Korean War veteran, warning that businesses using the
site might eventually jeopardize space needed for patients. "We can't
forget our veterans."
The debate was
spurred by a federal plan that could see the venerable facility shuttered. The
proposal, made public in August, called for closing the Canandaigua VA and six
others nationwide to streamline veterans' services.
Public outcry
and support from politicians including Sens. Chuck Schumer and Hillary Rodham
Clinton have raised hopes that Canandaigua's 70-year-old facility may stay
open, at least in part, but that has led to the question of how best to utilize
its space.
A multi-purpose facility?
The Canandaigua
VA, which now has about 192 inpatients, opened in 1933 with 468 beds and
reached its peak patient population in the early 1950s when the number of beds
climbed to 1,750. The declining population, along with federal concerns that
the expansive campus is underutilized and costing the government too much money, put the VA on the feds' hit list. But there have been
signs of encouragement. In mid-December the commission charged with
recommending whether to keep the VA open announced it is leaning toward
maintaining the hospital's roughly 110-bed nursing home and some short-term
beds. Still, that means 50 psychiatric beds would likely be moved to
Ontario County
Administrator Geoff Astles said at last week's
meeting that VA officials "may take a little away at a time. They'll nick
you to death."
Astles said he thinks the only way the VA can survive is to operate as a
facility serving both veterans and those outside the VA system.
Ideas being
considered by the We Care Committee include making the campus a training center
for employees of other VA hospitals, leasing space for college classes,
creating a wellness center, opening a homeless shelter or other types of living
arrangements, and leasing space to businesses and organizations.
Canandaigua
Mayor Ellen Polimeni suggested vacant VA space is
well suited for educational purposes, as well as for veterans' health care. For
example, she said, some Canandaigua students travel to the Hochstein School of
Music and Dance in
Polimeni, who is also a principal at the
"Our focus
becomes the 50 beds," she said.
Local lawmakers
are getting behind the campaign to save the beds. On Wednesday Assemblyman
Brian Kolb, R-Canandaigua, sent a letter to VA Secretary Anthony Principi, who
will make the decision whether to accept or reject VA changes proposed by the
federal commission. "Today, I ask you to intervene and prevent the closure
of the Canandaigua VA and the movement of any beds away from the Canandaigua
VAMC," wrote Kolb in a portion of the letter.
It's a matter of
money, Astles said. The "enormous financial
pressure" on the VA will continue unless a deal is struck that will make
full use of the complex in terms of veterans' services and other functions.
According to VA
Facilities Manager Dave Hill, there is 118,000 square feet of vacant spaces in
the center's 48 major buildings. Most of that constitutes the first and second
floors of Buildings 36 and 37 - 72,000 square feet. The three-story Building 14
off
"We don't
want to be burdened with property not being used," Charles Battaglia, a member of the Capital Asset Realignment for
Enhanced Services (CARES) Commission said last week. The committee will
recommend to VA chief Anthony Principi which VA hospitals should be closed.
Battaglia, who led a hearing on the closing proposal at the
Canandaigua VA in October, said the reason for the overhaul of veterans'
hospitals nationwide is "to get money away from overhead and put it into
direct medical care."
One way to do
that is by leasing unused portions of the VA hospital, he said, for commercial
or other uses.
Hill said that
while arrangements have already been made for some outside groups to use VA
space, the red tape involved in using federally owned facilities has also sent
some businesses packing - even those that could benefit veterans. For example,
he said, about three years ago a company out of
Jeanette Crooks,
contract specialist for the Canandaigua VA, explained that due to federal
dictates, Cantwell would have had to either take ownership of the building or
make a 40-year commitment to leasing it. Either way, VA headquarters eventually
turned down Cantwell's proposal, she said, because VA officials couldn't
justify the project. Though the details were different, a similar proposal by
the DePaul Group, a nationally recognized real estate and construction company,
also fell through. Crooks said that while it isn't clear to what extent federal
regulations caused the plans to fail, government quotas for wages and other
factors involved in doing construction projects on federal property can be
drawbacks.
Despite past
disappointments, it's encouraging that members of the community want to help
make the VA center increasingly useful, said Hill.
"By
bringing in some other players, then that will help keep the campus here,"
he said.
Battaglia said that while he can't speak to why past proposals from
outside groups fell through, the VA has the authority - and even encourages -
leases that put money into the VA system. Essentially, companies paying to rent
space at the VA can actually help pay for VA services.
"It gets
money away from overhead (expenses)," he said, "and puts it into
direct medical care."
Sharing
services
There is
precedent for outside groups sharing the VA campus: The Canandaigua school
district, two separate child-care programs and a nonprofit group all use VA
space. According to Crooks, two groups pay leases and the other two have
cost-avoidance agreements:
· Approximately 35 acres to the west is
leased by a nonprofit group, VALOR, a veterans' outreach organization. They use
the acreage to operate a public golf course that VA patients may use at no
charge.
The VA doesn't
lose or make any money from the deal as VALOR pays for utilities and reimburses
VA staff to maintain the grounds instead of paying to use the site.
· Under a similar sharing
agreement, the
· The first floor of Building
34 is leased to two separate groups, the
While there are
no concrete proposals yet for using vacant VA space, David Baker, president of
the Canandaigua Chamber of Commerce and leader of We Care, said Thursday that
the local coalition will eventually draw up a proposal for using vacant VA
space and submit it to VA officials in Washington, as well as lawmakers working
on saving the VA. A solid plan that everyone agrees on probably wouldn't be
ready until after Principi makes his decision, he said.
The goal, said
Baker, is to "enhance what's offered" in terms of making the campus
more useful to both veterans and the community and "keep the beds and
employees."
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