Former Army Hospital to Become AIDS Unit

Pentagon officials agreed Friday to turn a former military hospital near the Presidio in San Francisco over to health officials for a 350-bed AIDS care and research facility, but money to run the hospital--at least $15 million a year--remains in question.

The Pentagon, which had wanted to keep the building for its own use, officially changed its position after a meeting between Sen. Pete Wilson (R-Calif.) and Army Secretary John O. Marsh Jr. The military has been using the facility to house Defense Language Institute classrooms, which will be relocated to Ft. Ord, near Monterey.

The Army “was not eager to do it” but recognized “the importance of the problem,” said Wilson, who estimated that the new hospital could be opened within a year.

First, however, several money questions will have to be answered. City health officials, who say that running the hospital would cost between $15 million and $17 million in the first year and more later, would like the federal government to pick up 85% of that cost.

That issue has yet to be addressed and is “really part of a much larger question” of the “cooperative responsibilities of the federal, state and local governments” in the fight against acquired immune deficiency syndrome, Wilson said.

Wilson has agreed to ask Congress to appropriate about $15 million to refurbish the San Francisco building for hospital use and another $24 million to pay for relocating the defense language facility.

Members of the Senate and House appropriations committees have given no assurances on the funds, Wilson said. But he added: “I have every reason to think they will be sympathetic. . . . We’re not talking about a whole lot of money.”