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VETERANS OPPOSE PLAN TO LEASE MONTROSE VA
CAMPUS TO PRIVATE DEVELOPER -- "I'm concerned
it's going to become a luxury development
on the Hudson River."
Montrose VA
For more about the land grab at the Montrose VA,
use the VA Watchdog search engine...click here...
http://www.yourvabenefits.org/sessearch.php?q=montrose&op=and
Story here...
http://lohud.com/apps/pbcs.dll/ar
ticle?AID=/20080731/NEWS01/807310384/-1/newsfront
Story below:
-------------------------
Veterans oppose plan to lease Montrose
campus to private developer
By Susan Elan • The Journal News
The Department of Veterans Affairs wants to secure a 75-year lease with a
public or private sector developer by the summer of 2009 for more than 100
acres, including Hudson River waterfront, on its 184-acre Montrose campus.
As a first step, the VA held a public hearing this week at the Hudson
Valley Health Care System Montrose campus that was attended by more than
100 veterans - ranging from World War II era to the Iraq War - local
residents and elected officials.
Advertisement
 The
boisterous, three-hour hearing focused as much on public opposition to an
earlier VA decision to move some medical and nursing-home services from
Montrose to the VA Castle Point campus in Fishkill as it did on plans to
turn a large swath of parkland at Montrose into housing and other
unspecified uses.
"Castle Point is too far for guys my age," said Mohegan Lake resident
Dominic Esposito, 85, state commander of the Combat Infantryman's
Association and a Purple Heart recipient who was wounded during the Battle
of the Bulge. "If a doctor's appointment is delayed and you miss the bus,
you're lucky to get home. And gas is too expensive to get there."
Jay Halpern, a spokesman for the VA's Office of Asset Enterprise
Management in Washington, told the audience that revenues from a lease
that would be implemented in two phases would go to provide better
services, including improved health care, for veterans.
But many demanded to know why the taxpayer-funded federal agency doesn't
have the money it needs to take care of veterans.
"Why do you have to rent property to take care of vets?" asked Dan
Griffin, executive director of Vietnam Veterans of America for Westchester
County.
"All of the money should be coming out of the VA, not private
institutions," said Ed Grexa of Cortlandt, a career serviceman who retired
from the Army in 1996. "When I went into the service, they said they would
be there to take care of us."
The first phase of the project would involve leasing 108 acres on the
western portion of the campus. The lease would include Hudson River
access, the campus's wastewater treatment plant, and 21 buildings.
Cortlandt Supervisor Linda Puglisi, who opposes any development on the
campus not specifically for veterans, described the land selected for the
initial lease as a "gold mine for developers."
"I'm concerned it's going to become a luxury development on the Hudson
River," Puglisi said of the property that lies within the town she has
governed for 17 years. "There are no railroad tracks through it. There is
a beautiful beach that abuts the Hudson River."
Cortlandt's Town Board, with the support of the town's Planning Board,
enacted 4-acre zoning at the Montrose campus in March 2007. The purpose
was to protect the town from increased traffic, swelling school enrollment
and demands on police, emergency and other services that the board feared
would accompany dense housing development, Puglisi said.
But if the VA does not sell the land, the town cannot enforce the 4-acre
zoning, she said.
The land is not for sale and would revert to the VA after 75 years,
Halpern said.
A second phase of the proposed arrangement would lease 64 acres with 27
buildings to the same builder the VA hopes to select by the end of the
year. That would leave the VA with 12 acres for its facilities.
The second phase would not begin before completion of a multiple-specialty
outpatient center at Montrose and the modernization of the Castle Point
campus. That arrangement follows a VA decision in October to transfer 105
nursing-home beds and 70 psychiatric beds from Montrose to Castle Point.
Montrose would keep 21 beds for treating veterans suffering from
post-traumatic stress disorder, 42 beds for substance-abuse treatment and
53 beds for homeless veterans struggling with psychological and social
impairments.
James Lott, an Iraq War veteran who is receiving treatment for PTSD at
Montrose, said at the hearing that he fears services for those returning
from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan will not be adequate.
"My battle buddies and I come here because it's one of the top places for
PTSD treatment in the country," said Lott, a resident of New Haven, Conn.
"Montrose is the avenue for people like me to get treatment and change our
lives around. My family is suffering now. You've got to take care of
people now."
William Nazario of Montrose, junior vice commander of Chapter 21 of the
Military Order of the Purple Heart, said Montrose has many buildings that
could be used to provide treatment services and housing for veterans
returning from war now.
"I know Iraq vets who are afraid to hold their own infants and others who
are losing their homes," said Nazario, a Marine wounded in Vietnam who
volunteers at Montrose. "It takes too much time to build. We can fix the
neglected buildings that are here. It would be a lot cheaper."
State Assemblywoman Sandy Galef, D-Ossining, challenged the validity of
the public hearing because the VA had failed to record it electronically
or with a stenographer.
Halpern said the VA would prepare a written summary of the meeting that
would include public comment.
Westchester County plans to submit a proposal to lease the property for a
veterans village project that would include a continuing care retirement
community and affordable housing for veterans, Thomas Meier, director of
Westchester County's Veterans Service Agency, said at the hearing.
The VA hopes to officially solicit development proposals by fall and to
select a developer before the end of the year.
Reach Susan Elan at selan@lohud.com
or 914-666-6205.
-------------------------
posted by Larry
Scott
Founder and Editor
VA Watchdog dot Org
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