FROM THE BRENTWOOD NEWS

While a coalition of Brentwood merchants and veterans mustered on March 31 to protest the Veterans Administration’s proposal to develop 388 acres of its West Los Angeles campus, the VA delayed release of a report revealing their master plan for the coveted property.

The widely anticipated, 25-Year Land Use Master Plan was to provide the public with specifics the VA has been tightlipped about regarding the acreage. But when the federal agency in January ordered the plan’s completion in just ninety days, neighbors and veterans with a stake in any development found such a fast-track proposal ominous. "The VA should ask the guys who put their lives on the line what to do with that land," claimed Abe Englander, 83, who fought on World War II battlefields such as Normandy, "instead of leading us around by the nose and telling us what to do."

Such hard feelings were abundant at the noisy-but-dignified picket, which drew about fifty area veterans and Brentwood residents to the VA-owned parking lot on Barrington Place. Protesters hoisted signs reading "All Gave Some – Some Gave All," swapped thumbs-up with honking motorists, and swapped tales of VA outrages. "There’s been a massive decline in care since the Eighties," said Maxine Flam, 42, who claims her Silver Star-winning father was killed by botched VA surgery and now struggles to secure a pension for her mother. "They’re downgrading the services and pushing the veterans out into the streets." Veterans fear that the status quo – in which they allege half-day waits for indifferent medical attention are common – will turn even grimmer if the VA allows commercial development on the sprawling West Los Angeles campus. "This is a slow, systematic phase-out, to put us all out into HMOs. This property has become so valuable, greed comes before commitment," asserted Steve Palmer, another Second World War combatant.

Faced with ballooning deficits, the Veterans Administration is now considering the sale or lease of many surplus properties nationwide. But with a potential value in the billions, the Brentwood-adjacent VA parcel would be the greatest Southern California real estate prize in half a century. There is nary a big player in the area – UCLA, major film studios, the Donald Sterlings of the region – who would not make a play for such land. For Brentwood business owners like Jay Handal, however, the development poses a nightmare of construction, dust and noise. "It will be bigger than Century City and completely destroy the infrastructure of both Brentwood and Westwood," the restauranteur said. "We have homeless vets begging on Wilshire, but empty VA property they say they don’t need."

While promising delivery of the Land Use Master Plan later this month, the VA’s Lynn Carrier cautioned that specifics on the project’s ultimate scope will be scant. "There’s actually no plan for development yet," claimed the agency’s Vice President of Administrative Support. "We’re calling it ‘a plan for a plan,’ with possible future options for land use here, but there’s not really going to be any particular recommendations."

Even the hint of using the land for anything but VA services, however, enraged the veteran protesters. The CEO of the Greater Los Angeles VA, Philip Thomas, was a particular target of their wrath. "A lot of these vets, they’re lying down right over here," said Palmer, pointing at the nearby Veterans Cemetery. "They paid for this with their lives. All Thomas has done is take things away from us. It’s as if he wants to build his own private empire."

Local residents also decried the perception of big-government arrogance. Westwood’s Laura Lake, a candidate for the Los Angeles City Council’s Fifth District who took part in the protest, considered the VA plan "An end run, an effort to re-zone the land without an environmental study, which is totally unacceptable and illegal. They’re not interested in veterans, they view this land as a cash cow." "The VA is saying, if the property is used to raise revenue to care for the veterans, it doesn’t violate the deed," Handal agreed "That’s how they’re trying to get around it. It’s stonewalling, and it’s bad neighbor policy."

The VA’s Carrier dismissed these fears, maintaining that "The report will reflect that, in the future, none of this can happen without every required review and development process that’s regulated. The entire point of the 25-Year Plan’s process is to assure with certainty that the present and future needs of veterans for health care services would be maintained. Only if and when that happens is there is any way the land can be utilized in an indirect way to benefit veterans."

Both the protest and the report’s delay portend a long fight over the priceless property’s future. Yet one aspect of the plan signals a likely source of future discord between the alliance of Brentwood residents and veterans who oppose it. While veterans decry diminishing VA services, attempts to better them are sometimes unpopular with the locals. One aspect of the VA’s plan is to build a new Consolidated Mail Outpatient Pharmacy – a 75,000 square foot structure that will fill nearly 20,000 prescriptions daily. It will employ two shifts of workers, and Brentwood residents fear trucks scurrying in and out of the facility at all hours. A proposal to build the CMOP at the corner of Constitution and Sepulveda was dropped from the plan because of local resistance, and it will now be built next to the facility’s existing site. This conflict between the wishes of those who live in Brentwood and those who seek veterans’ care nearby might be the wedge the VA is counting on. In any case, it is now plain to all sides that any aggressive development abutting Brentwood will likely be long, slow trench warfare – even for a powerful federal agency.

Dan Sanders