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As more veterans return from the Iraq War with mental and physical injuries, the Department of Veterans Affairs is buying former military buildings in Mountain View and Sunnyvale to make way for more patient services at its Palo Alto and Menlo Park facilities.
By 2011, officials say, the Army Reserve Center at 1776 Old Middlefield Way and a building at the former Onizuka Air Force Base — located on the Sunnyvale side of Moffett Field — will be renovated for use as VA administrative offices.
“Our Palo Alto campus is only 93 acres,” said Jason Nietupski, facility planner for the Palo Alto VA health care system. “We’ve run out of real estate.”
Meanwhile, the Army Reserve Center is planning to move to a new building at the former Orion Park housing site at Moffett Field.
“The Army reserve site has many problems,” Nietupski said. “Heating in portions of the building doesn’t work, there are no elevators, there is lead and asbestos and American Disability Act issues that the Army never had to deal with.”
The relocation of administrative functions to Mountain View is part of a billion dollar expansion plan that includes a new traumatic brain injury hospital, a new psychiatric hospital and a new ambulatory care hospital in Palo Alto.
And in Menlo Park, a large research facility will move from seismically challenged 1929 buildings slated for demolition to a two-story office building at Onizuka, adjacent to the landmark “blue cube” building visible from Highway 101. The research operation is the third largest in the country, with 900 scientists studying everything from AIDS to Alzheimer’s, dementia, brain injury, geriatrics, mental health and infectious diseases. Some of the researchers are “world renowned,” Nietupski said.
Plans for Onizuka have been controversial, as the city of Sunnyvale has been deemed the local redevelopment authority for its 20 acres. Sunnyvale has discussed building a hotel and conference center there along with an auto mall and a corporate headquarters. But federal agencies like the VA get first crack at the site, Nietupski said.
