Washington – The Department of Veterans Affairs and Aurora officials announced Tuesday that they’ve settled on the site of the old Fitzsimons Army Medical Center for a new veterans hospital.
The new facility will be within walking distance of the University of Colorado’s new Health Sciences Center. But it will not be a joint facility with CU, as originally planned.
The VA complex will include a 1.1-million-square-foot hospital and up to four other buildings, and will cost about $350 million, according to information provided by the VA to Sen. Wayne Allard, R-Colo.
“This agreement will be instrumental in our ability to continue to provide the world-class care Denver veterans have become accustomed to,” Veterans Affairs Secretary Jim Nicholson, formerly a Colorado developer, said at a Washington ceremony held to announce the deal.
The new site is at the corner of East Colfax Avenue and Potomac Street, near Interstate 225, on the southeast corner of the Fitzsimons campus.
“There will be three hospitals in a row on Colfax,” said Aurora Mayor Ed Tauer.
The VA and Tauer, as head of the Fitzsimons Redevelopment Authority, signed a “memorandum of understanding” to work together toward the VA’s acquiring the 20-acre site. Tauer said that could expand to 30 acres.
It will displace a proposed conference hotel considered crucial to the success of the “bioscience park” also planned for the Fitzsimons campus. A privately owned medical office will also have to be bought and moved.
Under Tuesday’s agreement, to get the site, the VA will have to pay the redevelopment authority what it costs the Aurora agency to buy a replacement site for the planned conference center and hotel.
“The big issue now is price – what they’ll pay for the land,” Tauer said. “There’s a lot of administrative steps that need to be done.”
The site emerged from “whittling down” a list of six sites, Tauer said.
“It’s only the first step,” the VA’s Nicholson said. “Let’s call it an agreement to agree.”
The signing ceremony put back on track a process that disintegrated last winter when the VA broke off its plan to develop a shared facility with the University of Colorado Hospital.
The VA’s deal with CU fell apart because VA officials said they needed 38 acres, and CU had set aside only 12.5 acres. The VA said then its facility needed to be 1.46 million square feet.
Last year, the VA inspector general found filthy, dangerous and unhealthy conditions at the VA Medical Center in Denver. A spokeswoman declined to provide data on how many patients the Denver VA treats yearly.
“The old facility, while they are doing a yeoman’s job of providing care for veterans, it is over 50 years old,” said Kenneth C. Melcher, president of United Veterans Committee of Colorado.
“And regardless of what you do to renovate it, it’s still an over-50-year-old building,” Melcher said.
Preliminary plans call for designs to be completed in early 2007 and construction to begin around the spring of 2008, said Mark Williams, a principal in H+L Architects, the Denver-based firm serving as chief architect for the project.
The campus, which will include a spinal-cord-injury unit, a neuro-health-care facility, a research building, a warehouse and parking for 1,200 cars, should take about three years to complete.
“It is a proud day,” U.S. Rep. Bob Beauprez, R-Colo., said at the ceremony. Beauprez had called the collapse of the VA’s deal with CU “a tragedy.”
Melcher, who served in Vietnam, said he thought the Fitzsimons location would be more convenient for veterans, particularly those flying in from other states or driving in from outside the Denver area.
“The next hurdle, I think, will be funding. Hopefully we’ll be able to overcome that,” he said.
Allard staffers said Colorado is in a reasonably good position to get money for the facility.
“I think people feel pretty confident Denver is around the top of the list,” said Allard chief of staff Sean Conway. “This is a lot of money, but Sen. Allard is on the Appropriations Committee, and everybody in the delegation is rowing together.”
Congress already set aside $30 million for the project, and Nicholson said that not much has been spent so far.
Staff writer Mike Soraghan can be reached at 202-662-8730 or msoraghan@denverpost.com.
