“Construction has begun at the massive Veterans Affairs hospital complex in Mid-City, with pile-driving almost complete, officials told a New Orleans City Council committee on Wednesday. The roughly $1 billion project is scheduled to be finished by February 2016.
Mark Brideweser, the VA’s project executive, said construction is underway on a central energy plant for the hospital, which will be located between Tulane Avenue and Canal Street on the blocks bounded by South Galvez and South Rocheblave streets. A recruitment center will be set up in the redesigned Pan American building located on the site, which should be open by the end of the year.
Julie Catellier, director of the Southeast Louisiana Veterans Health Care System, said along with the $995 million to build the hospital, there is another $700 million set aside to “breathe life into it,” which will include hiring scores of new employees.
The regional system provides services for veterans in 23 parishes, employing 1,250 people. Once the new hospital campus is finished, another 1,100 jobs will be added, Catellier said.
The VA is currently providing some outpatient services at the system’s old downtown hospital, which was shuttered after Hurricane Katrina. But patients who need hospital care are treated by Veterans Affairs doctors at Tulane University’s hospital, Catellier said.
The Southeast Louisiana system cares for about 40,000 veterans or about 25 percent of the veterans in the area. In New Orleans, the VA provides health care to half of the veterans who live in the city, Catellier said.
Right next door to the new VA site, construction is further along at the location of the University Medical Center, the teaching hospital that will replace the “Big Charity” hospital closed by Louisiana State University after the storm. Since then, LSU has provided services at nearby Interim LSU Public Hospital — better known as University Hospital — which will close once the UMC opens in 2015.
State officials are in negotiations with the nonprofit parent company that runs Children’s Hospital and Touro Infirmary to operate the interim hospital and, eventually, University Medical Center.
Critics of both the projects have objected to the destruction of a historic swath of Mid-City, where homes were removed or demolished to make way for the new medical centers. Although dozens of houses were removed by the city, that project too has come under fire as the nonprofit hired to rehabilitate the homes instead left them to molder at various locations around New Orleans.
Catellier said four historic homes left on the site will be incorporated into the project, used for patient rehabilitation and mental health treatment.”
*Original article written by Laura Maggi for The Times Picayune. To view the original article, click here*
