VA to Craft Plan for Its Brentwood Land

Line up and take a number: What some consider Los Angeles’ most valuable piece of open space is up for grabs. Again.

Federal officials today will begin drawing up what they say is a “business plan” for the development of open space at the 387-acre Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Brentwood.

Surrounded by million-dollar homes, gleaming office towers and high-end retail shops, the VA land is viewed by many residents as an oasis of green in the middle of a densely packed and paved-over Westside.

Its lawns and tree-shaded slopes mark a small break in the uninterrupted line of office and condo towers that runs along Wilshire Boulevard from the Miracle Mile through Beverly Hills and into Westwood and Brentwood.

But it’s exactly this ultra-prime location that has long made developers salivate over its potential. They say the property is underutilized and that opening some of it to development would provide more services to the public while generating revenue for the federal government.

VA officials have hired a consulting firm and appointed an advisory panel to determine how the land should be divvied up.

There should be no shortage of development ideas.

In the past the VA land has been eyed by medical researchers, theater producers, advertising executives, filmmakers, home builders, sports teams, apartment developers, transportation companies and operators of museums, restaurants and schools.

Those who appreciate its leafy lawns and hills also have been vocal.

“We believe in the open space that is there. We believe in preserving it,” said Sue Young, a Brentwood resident who heads the Veterans Park Conservancy, a group that has proposed creating a veterans national park on the grounds. “We look at it as a place of tranquillity as well as a place to take care of veterans.”

Outside interests have been nibbling at the property since 1924, according to descendants of early Westside settlers Arcadia Bandini de Baker and John P. Jones. Those two donated the acreage to the federal government in 1888 for a National Soldiers Home for veterans of the Civil War.

The San Diego Freeway took a huge hunk of the Soldiers Home site in the 1950s. The Federal Building -- where the VA rents office space -- occupies another. The north side of the property is leased as a 200-space parking lot for the Brentwood Village shopping center. Brentwood School leases 21 acres near Sunset Boulevard for a $3-million sports complex.

The Army Reserve and National Guard armories fill the southwest corner. A transitional housing complex run by the Salvation Army covers the original southeast corner.

It was the two-acre land transfer to the Salvation Army that prompted heirs of De Baker and Jones to file a lawsuit alleging that conditions of the original gift were violated. They said the original deed required that the land be “permanently” used exclusively for veterans or returned to the donor families.

The families lost their federal appeals court case in 1990 on what they claimed was a technicality.

Later in the 1990s, pressure to develop the VA land grew. An advertising company offered $300,000 a year to erect three billboards there. Parking space was rented to a school bus company and to the nearby Getty Center. The Red Cross leased a chunk of land for a headquarters building. A hotel firm rented space for laundry facilities.

A petroleum company rented an oil-drilling site while others proposed placing a film studio, apartments, condominiums and offices and retail shops there.

A VA land-use plan a few years ago called for development of 7.2 million square feet of commercial and medical-related construction on the site. When Westsiders complained that such development was tantamount to putting “another couple of Century Cities” there, the U.S. House of Representatives voted to block funding needed to implement the plan.

After that, then-VA Secretary Anthony Principi instructed agency planners to junk the development plan and start over. Last year, he brushed aside a VA commission’s recommendation that the government “consider all options for divestiture” of surplus Brentwood property, “including outright sale, transfer to another public entity and a reformed enhanced-use leasing process.”

Instead, Principi said last May, “the West L.A. campus is a unique resource and it is important that VA preserve the integrity of the land originally granted as an Old Soldiers home. VA is committed to maintaining the property for uses that serve to enhance the department’s mission.”

Principi was replaced as head of the agency a few months later by James Nicholson.

The accounting and consulting firm of PricewaterhouseCoopers will prepare the new land-use “business plan.” VA officials say it is scheduled to be forwarded to Nicholson in August, and it is anticipated that he will act on its recommendations early next year.

“There are a lot of definitions as to what constitutes ‘excess land,’ ” said Dean Stordahl, director of the Loma Linda VA Medical Center and chairman of the advisory panel. “That’s why we want to get public input.”

Two other VA officials are listed on the 10-member panel, which also includes Los Angeles City Council member Cindy Miscikowski, Brentwood Community Council chairwoman (and City Council candidate) Flora Gil Krisiloff, commercial real estate broker Barbara Tenzer, World War II prisoner of war Harry Corre, state Department of Veterans Services Undersecretary Roger Brautigan, UCLA medical school Associate Dean Dr. Alan Robinson and U.S. Vets Village site director Steve Peck.

Stordahl said the study would attempt to identify property needed during the next 20 years for veterans’ medical services before classifying leftover land as surplus.

VA officials say a portion of the empty space north of Wilshire Boulevard has already been earmarked for a state-run veterans home. Also planned is a residential center for use by families of veterans undergoing medical care, and VA offices that are being relocated from the nearby Federal Building in Westwood.

Additionally, about 20 acres have been designated for expansion of the national cemetery. The existing Westwood burial ground is separated from the VA property by the San Diego Freeway.

The panel will meet for the first time this morning, and at 12:30 p.m. today it will conduct the first of four planned public meetings. The three-hour session will be held at the Wadsworth Theater, 11301 Wilshire Blvd.