Hearing tackles New Orleans VA med center location

New Orleans residents and officials are locked in a debate over which would be better for those involved: building a new veterans hospital where the vacant Lindy Boggs Medical Center now stands, or tearing down a neighborhood so the hospital can be close to the downtown medical schools and the city's nascent bioscience corridor. The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs has planned for two years to erect a new hospital on the edge of downtown New Orleans, where it could share services with Louisiana State University's new teaching hospital and help anchor a biosciences district that city leaders envision as an economic driver for the region. But building the hospital downtown would mean displacing a neighborhood filled with historic houses.