VA brass keep options open on site of hospital

In 2007, New Orleans and Louisiana leaders pulled together a plan to commandeer land in a historic but struggling neighborhood on the edge of the Central Business District and offer it to the federal government as a place to build a veterans hospital. But the people who stand to be displaced have pressed the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs to consider other locations that would not require the demolition of traditional shotgun houses and other historic landmarks. Two senior VA officials have now reiterated the agency's preference for building in downtown New Orleans, where veterans would benefit from proximity to the planned Louisiana State University teaching hospital and the city's two medical schools, which would regularly send faculty and residents to help treat the VA's patients.