In an unusual alignment of opinion, about 700 Westsiders attended a public meeting on the future uses of the Veterans Affairs property last Thursday and voiced their opposition to recommendations that the 387-acre campus include a mixed-use residential complex or a medical research facility. Members of a advisory panel, who met for nearly three hours after the marathon public meeting in the Wadsworth Theatre on the VA campus, were nearly unanimous on their recommendations, which they hoped would be seriously considered by Secretary of Veterans Affairs Jim Nicholson. Appointed by the VA secretary, the panel is made up of state and local VA officials, a UCLA/Veterans Hospital physician, veterans service providers and Brentwood activists, including realtor Barbara Tenser and Brentwood Community Council chairman Flora Krisiloff. They adopted a set of four principles which guided their votes on each of the business plan options. The principles included: 1. Honor former Secretary Anthony Principi’s pledge that there be no commercial development on the site. 2. The land should be retained for direct benefit to veterans in perpetuity, in compliance with the deed. 3. Honor the Cranston Act, which established preserve areas totaling about 109 acres; and 4. Abide by the National Preservation Act. “Everything else followed these four guiding principles,” Krisiloff told the Palisadian-Post. “We were unanimous on every vote except the plan to establish a medical research facility on the site, which I voted against because I felt it hadn’t been vetted properly. I didn’t want to see Amgen or Genetech on the property.” Secretary Nicholson is under no obligation to accept the panel’s recommendations, Krisiloff said. “He will decide which options he wants to adopt and then send the business plan options back to the consultants for analysis.” There will be two more public meetings, and further reviews by the panel at each step of the process. The third public meeting may be called by the end of October. “I think, in the end, that our recommendations turned out to be better than I had expected because we followed the guiding principles,” Krisiloff said. “But it’s 50-50 if the secretary will accept our recommendations. I wouldn’t be surprised if he comes back with more commercial options. Nor would I be surprised if he supports our proposals. “I really do hope that this secretary honors the new land-use plan,” Krisiloff added. “I would really like to see a land-use master plan that covers all the federal land in West Los Angeles, including the proposed 1 million-sq-.ft. FBI headquarters at the Federal Building, and the army reserve [at the corner of Federal and Wilshire]. We have all this federal land that is not heavily developed and the federal government is looking at ways to increase revenue. It’s the wrong time, because we’re in traffic gridlock.”
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