Seeking Tighter Control of VA Land

People have lined up to get into the place for 111 years--ever since that gray winter day in 1889 when its first residents arrived after marching, military-style, 300 miles to get there.

But old soldiers aren’t the only ones these days who covet a spot at the 430-acre federal veterans center in West Los Angeles.

Movie makers, ad executives, athletic coaches, homeless advocates, medical researchers, theater producers, apartment operators, hotel owners, bus drivers, restaurant managers, educators and museum officials are among those jockeying to keep or get pieces of the sprawling, largely undeveloped VA Medical Center grounds that span Wilshire Boulevard.

That clamor angers descendants of the two pioneer families that donated the property and has veterans groups up in arms.

In response, officials of the Department of Veterans Affairs now promise to never again sell off chunks of medical center land. They also vow that future leases of the property to outsiders will be done with care--and with the concurrence of veterans and community members.

Bounded by high-rise offices and nearby million-dollar estates in Brentwood and Westwood, what started as a modest home for old soldiers on the rural outskirts of Los Angeles has become what some consider the most valuable property in the United States.

The newly appointed head of the West Los Angeles VA center is acknowledging that mistakes have been made in the use of the land.

“In the past, the VA has not done everything it could to be viewed as a member of the community,” said Philip P. Thomas, chief executive officer of the VA Greater Los Angeles Healthcare System for the past seven months.

Thomas, a 49-year-old former Army major who served in the Persian Gulf War, said the VA will develop a master plan for the site that will map out renovation goals and such projects as a proposed Alzheimer’s treatment unit for veterans.

Planned improvements include turning land beneath 14 old trailer buildings into green space and a $3-million renovation of the landmark Victorian-style chapel.

“We are not going to be divvying up the land. It will remain intact. I’m making a commitment that we’re not going to subdivide our property. That happened in the past. We’re going to retain ownership,” he said. “We may change the green space, but we never will destroy it.”

That has not always been the case. For decades, developers have nibbled at the property.

The huge Federal Building at Wilshire and Veteran Avenue (where the VA rents office space for $3 million a year) was once earmarked to be an old soldiers home. So was Army Reserve and National Guard land along Federal Avenue on the west side of the VA grounds.

The transfer of a two-acre chunk of VA land along Sepulveda Boulevard that ended up as Salvation Army low-income housing prompted a lawsuit by heirs of the families that donated the land to the government in 1888.

John P. Farquhar and other descendants of Arcadia Bandini de Baker and John P. Jones charged that the original deed required that the land be “permanently” used for veterans. They lost their case in 1990 in a federal appeals court on what they say was a technicality.

These days, family members continue to view the VA operation with skepticism. They say they are prepared to demand that the remaining land be returned to them if it is not exclusively used for the benefit of veterans.

“They started chipping away at the land in 1924,” said Farquhar, an 88-year-old Hollywood resident who remembers as a child seeing Civil War veterans living in Victorian-style barracks at what was then known as the National Soldiers Home.

“There shouldn’t be any other uses on the property. It’s not consistent with what the land was given for,” said family member Ricardo Bandini Johnson, who lives in Agoura Hills.

Descendant Carolina Barrie of Santa Monica also decried the land being “piecemealed away.”

Veteran Warns of ‘Land Grab’

Local veterans groups also condemn what they suggest has been the parceling off of VA land.

“Half of it’s gone already when you consider the Federal Building is on VA retirement property,” said Joe Adamski, commander of the West Los Angeles chapter of the Vietnam Veterans of America.

Vietnam veteran Frank Juarez, a Santa Monica telephone company manager, said he joined the American Legion specifically to fight the dismantling of the VA site. Last week he appealed to members nationwide for help.

“The ‘land grab’ is on and veterans are not invited,” Juarez warned in a letter to American Legion Magazine. He urged members to push for federal action “immediately prohibiting” the use of West Los Angeles VA land by non-veteran organizations.

The Salvation Army land acquisition--coupled with its lease of several buildings on remaining VA property--has particularly irked some veterans groups.

They say that the Salvation Army’s presence on government land violates the concept of separation of church and state. They say that despite the sound of its name, the group has nothing to do with the American military.

“Let them build someplace else. They have the money,” said AMVETS unit commander Ray Delgado, a plumbing company manager from Mar Vista.

Salvation Army officials have defended their VA operations as both appropriate and effective, however.

In a memo, Salvation Army Program Director Roy Snapp-Kolas said his organization was invited by the VA in 1994 to run a program for homeless veterans. Since then, more than 9,000 veterans have been helped there, and services have been expanded to include substance abuse treatment.

VA officials say the success of the Salvation Army program, called Haven, led them to lease a second building to a another outside group. The New Direction organization is run by a decorated Vietnam combat veteran, John Keaveney, and is supported by veterans groups.

Keaveney and other veterans have proposed creation of a “Veterans Village” on the VA grounds. They envision it as a veteran-run community that would provide affordable housing, nursing care and other services for elderly and disabled veterans and their families.

The VA’s Thomas says he is opposed to that because it would mean the surrendering of control of the West Los Angeles site.

“I’m not about to give up the rights to this property to any particular group,” he said.

His plan for closer oversight of the 430 acres includes next month’s planned creation of a community advisory committee made up of local residents, business owners and representatives of local government agencies and veterans groups, he said.

Thomas said his staff has been instructed to take a tougher stance on future lease proposals--including the types negotiated with the Salvation Army and New Direction. In the meantime, proposals such as the one from an advertising company to pay $300,000 a year to put three billboards on VA land are being rejected.

Sticker shock could be in store for longtime leaseholders when their contracts come up for renegotiation, according to John Fitzgerald, West Los Angeles facilities manager for the VA.

The historic Wadsworth Theater, which the VA rented out for $400 a month in the past, is now leased for $8,000 a month to a New York promoter who will also pay an incentive based on ticket sales.

A 200-space parking lot at the north end of the VA grounds used by Brentwood Village shoppers will soon generate about $50,000 a year. “In the past we basically got nothing for it,” said Fitzgerald.

Negotiations are underway with UCLA that will require the university to pay for continued use of a VA athletic field that in the past it used in exchange for a share of concession stand revenues.

Other leases include Brentwood School athletic fields, parking facilities for the Getty Center and a school bus company, headquarters land for the Red Cross, a drilling site for an oil company, and laundry facilities for a hotel firm.

Officials say the harder-line lease approach is necessary because of VA funding squeezes.

“We have a new philosophy,” Fitzgerald said. “We can’t afford to give things away anymore.”