Buffalo, N.Y. (WBEN) - A proposal for a new $1 billion VA Hospital in Buffalo was announced on Friday, which would replace the 70-year-old facility on Bailey Avenue.
"What the VA did it basically went in and they did an assessment of the current VA Hospital, and there's $300 million in improvements that are needed and it's 70 years old. So it's a facility that has limited capability to address the modern healthcare system that we need to take care of our veterans here," said Congressman Brian Higgins on Monday with Susan Rose and Brian Mazurowski on WBEN. "So you spend $300 million to rehab an old building, or $1 billion to do a new building. That's where we're at."
Talks are preliminary, at this point, as to where the location of the new VA Hospital would be. However, there are a few different options they are reportedly looking at.
"They looked at the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus and the synergy with places like Roswell, with places like the UB Medical School make some sense, but you're in a more densely developed corridor there. So there's issues of neighborhood preservation, there's issues of parking. It's a big issue, and it just needs to be addressed," Higgins said.
While the construction of a new VA Hospital may still be some time away from getting started, Higgins believes it's important to not only get the community leaders involved in this process with the U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs, but they also need to get veterans involved in order to find a way to best benefit those who had served in Western New York.
"We are not going to have the VA Washington-based bureaucracy impose a design or a hospital on us," Higgins said. "We in Buffalo and Western New York, with the assistance of community leaders and veterans groups, are going to devise a program from which we will advance; this is not going to come from the top down, it's coming from our community to the VA. We want the best possible facility for our veterans, and the only way that you could accomplish that is include the veterans in the planning process."
There are also reports that a new VA Hospital is also being looked at in Batavia, but it appears a new hospital in Buffalo would be the bigger facility.
Hear more from Higgins' conversation during "A New Morning" below:
