VA hospital land price probe unresolved

A year after two members of Congress asked for an investigation into the appraisal price of the planned Brownsboro Road VA Medical Center site, there has been no response and opponents are launching an 11th-hour appeal to persuade Veterans Affairs officials to pick another site.

There's "momentum" to change course on the Brownsboro plan "right now like there's never been before," said Irene Yeager, an opponent along with her husband, architect Mike Yeager. The Yeagers, who would be able to see the medical center from their backyard in the small city of Crossgate, have suggested a veterans cemetery at the site instead.

U.S. Rep. John Yarmuth, who called for the investigation after the price jumped to $12.9 million only 14 months after it was appraised at $9.8 million, is still awaiting a response from the VA's Inspector General's Office.

Yarmuth said a year ago that the VA "may have paid an excessive amount" for the Brownsboro site in a letter to acting VA Inspector General Richard Griffin. "It is critical that not only is the VA a good steward of taxpayer dollars but that the community has confidence in this project," he wrote.

U.S. Rep. Mike Coffman, R-Colo., who was chairman of the House Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, also questioned the change in appraisal at the same time in a letter to Eric Shinseki, then VA secretary.

Yarmuth also sent a letter Feb. 20 asking VA officials to respond to new questions raised by Louisville Metro Council member Angela Leet about the suitability of the site as well as traffic issues. He forwarded a letter Leet sent during a public comment period on a new Draft Site-Specific Environmental Assessment report.

Plans call for the nearly 900,000-square-foot medical complex to be built at a cost of almost $1 billion at 4906 Brownsboro, in a congested area next to the Interstate 264/U.S. 42 interchange, Holiday Manor Shopping Center and Crossgate.

Previously | Yarmuth calls for inquiry on VA land

C-J Exclusive | VA Hospital land appraisals questioned

"There has been much debate about the location for the new hospital and legitimate questions, particularly traffic concerns, have been raised," Yarmuth wrote. "(I)t is essential to the future of this project that our community concerns about the steps taken in this process are fully addressed."

Robert Steurer, a spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said the senator has never endorsed a location for a new VA hospital but feels that veterans have waited "way too long" since a plan to replace the current hospital on Zorn Avenue was announced in 2006. The senator believes it's time to build, Steurer said.

Public controversy

Even as VA officials say they are moving forward with plans for the Brownsboro site, the more than 100 page environmental assessment report notes that the plan is "associated with public controversy." It cites residents' concerns about "further deterioration" of traffic conditions, changes in travel distances for veterans and adverse effects on property values.

The VA bought the 34.4-acre Brownsboro site in July 2012, after the appraised price jumped from $9.8 million in December 2010 to $12.9 million in 2012. Both appraisals were done by Galloway Appraisals, which was hired by the VA.

Local developer Jonathan Blue — who owned the property and originally planned a development called The Midlands there — had described it as "clean, green and shovel-ready" when the VA began to consider about 20 sites in 2011.

A formal recommendation about the Brownsboro site is expected in early spring by Labat Environmental Inc., an independent contractor that did the draft report and is reviewing public comments. An environmental assessment in 2012 concluded that a full environmental impact statement was "not required," the report says.

The hospital complex is already being designed, and renderings are shown in the report. A legal ad in January also said the "VA intends to issue a 'Finding of No Significant Impact'" on the general Brownsboro Road area.

But if it can be proved that something is "glaringly false" in the environmental assessment, the contractor would have to go back and verify the validity of the original data and reassess, said Laura Schafsnitz, a spokeswoman for the VA Medical Center Replacement office in Louisville.

While the hospital originally was expected to be open in 2016-2017, construction now is expected to start in 2017 and be finished in 2023.

With that in mind, opponents are redoubling efforts to press for reconsideration of the Brownsboro site, writing letters to the media and government leaders. Some also express concern about the appraisal price and call for the hospital to go downtown — where it would be close to University of Louisville Hospital and other agencies that serve veterans.

In an interview this week, Leet said she favors a site at the end of the Ninth Street exit off Interstate 64 just west of downtown, where plans call for demolishing the Beecher Terrace public housing development. Leet said there could be room for the hospital and new housing.

Leet, who has a master's in engineering from U of L, said it's time to "take another look" and "make sure we're doing the right thing."

Others — including U of L President James Ramsey, local developer Jeff Underhill and philanthropist and preservationist Edith Bingham — are still advocating that the hospital be located downtown near the U of L Medical Center.

U of L spokesman Mark Hebert said Ramsey's views are still the same as those stated in a 2008 joint letter with then-Mayor Jerry Abramson to the VA secretary. The letter proposed a "new partnership" with the VA to "provide the finest medical service available anywhere" to veterans at a new hospital downtown.

Underhill, who has sent out letters advocating the downtown site, said this week there "appears to be a huge disconnect" between what's planned and what many people want. After a column he wrote about the issue ran in The Courier-Journal, he said he was inundated with support on social media and by email.

Meanwhile, some veterans oppose building the medical center downtown and some would like to keep the facility at 800 Zorn Ave. — where millions of dollars have been spent to keep the facility in shape.

"I personally have no problem with the Brownsboro site," said William Baird, 65, who served in the Army in Vietnam and lives in Hurstbourne. "I can't think of another place in Louisville that could serve the majority of patients better than what they could there."

But if a long-proposed parking garage could be added at the current Robley Rex VA Medical Center, he said he sees no need for a new hospital. It's the care veterans receive that's important, he said.

'We're all stuck'

While the downtown site was among the top contenders for the VA hospital, it ultimately was rejected. Officials concluded it would take "considerably more" money and time to build the hospital downtown or at the Zorn Avenue site, which it would replace, according to Bob Morey, former facility planner at the VA hospital.

Schafsnitz said the Brownsboro site scored the highest — over two other finalists on Fegenbush Lane south of Bardstown Road and Factory Lane in far eastern Louisville — based on such criteria as surrounding land use, proximity to local hospitals, accessibility to transportation and visible or known environmental issues.

The VA complex would have a 104-bed hospital, diagnostic and treatment facilities, a Veterans Benefits Administration regional office, three community-based outpatients clinics operating elsewhere now, laundry facility, a central utility plant, parking garages for 3,000 vehicles and other infrastructure and amenities.

Meanwhile, state projects to widen I-264 from Westport Road to Interstate 71 and improve the U.S. 42 interchange would be carried out within several years, said Andrea Clifford, a state transportation spokeswoman in Louisville.

Baird, the Vietnam veteran, said he doesn't think the dire predictions by people in the Brownboro area are justified. "A lot of people that are living in that area are more concerned with themselves" and whether they will be inconvenienced, he said.

The Yeagers propose that the Brownsboro site be an "annex" to the nearby Zachary Taylor National Cemetery, which is full.

But the idea wouldn't comply with requirements for creating new veterans cemeteries because there are two others that are not full within 75 miles of Louisville in Radcliffe and Lebanon, said Patrick Lovett, director of the Kentucky National Cemetery Complex in Lexington.

Mike Yeager has drawn up a design for a cemetery at the Brownsboro site that he plans to present at Leet's "District Dialogue" meeting from 5:30 to 6:30 p.m. Monday at Portland Christian School, 8509 Westport Road.

Irene Yeager said she worked for three years with Pat Roles, another opponent who lives across Brownsboro Road in Northfield, to compile a time line documenting the discussion, site selection and planning process.

Roles, whose husband is a former Marine, said even though the hospital "would not be looming over our neighborhood," it would be "a big problem for us" and have a "drastic" effect on traffic and quality of life.

"This hospital should be downtown," she said. With some imagination and creative problem solving, "it's doable, and yet somebody pushed them into buying this property, and we're all stuck."

Reporter Martha Elson can be reached at (502) 582-7061. Follow her on Twitter at @MarthaElson_cj.