About 100 people with a stake in the center’s operation showed up at 11 a.m. Tuesday at Building 5 to discuss VA Secretary Anthony Principi’s recommendations for the center under the Capital Assets for the Realigning for Enhanced Services (CARES) program. Ryder Smith, a representative of PricewaterhouseCoopers, the national VA consultant, briefed the public and the nine-member panel on eight business planning options they had come up with.

Smith explained the pros and cons of each and took questions and comments from the audience. Only one of the eight plans called for relocating the center, and it was among those eliminated by the panel.

A baseline plan that would not significantly change the location or type of services at the center was the first Smith presented. It would include upgrades to address safety, security and other material deficiencies at the site, without changing the health care services provided unless usage of certain procedures falls below quality or cost-effectiveness threshold levels. It called for relocating the nursing home, domiciliary, other inpatient and mental health and all ambulatory/outpatient services in phased renovations to buildings in Courtyard 1 and vacating all Courtyard 2 buildings except engineering. The water tower, fire station, and boiler would be kept.

The other options the panel selected, which will be judged against this baseline when they’re all submitted to VA officials in Washington, D.C., call for:

# Renovating buildings in Courtyard 1 for outpatient/ambulatory and augmenting with new building in Courtyard 1 for inpatient services. Potential re-use/redevelopment of Canandaigua Academy, Chapel Street, Bushwood and Golf Course parcels.

# Renovating buildings in the “historic core” of the campus for ambulatory and outpatient services, allowing for re-use and redevelopment of the Canandaigua Academy, Chapel Street, Bushwood and Golf Course parcels.

# Moving inpatient and outpatient facilities to the northern part of the campus, between Ring Road and the southern end of Chapel Street, creating redevelopment potential for the Canandaigua Academy, Chapel Street, Main Campus and Golf Course parcels.

An additional option, suggested by committee member Dr. Lawrence Flesh, chief medical officer of the VA Healthcare Network Upstate New York, was also among the four yesterday’s group preferred. It called for renovating buildings 1, 3, 4, for outpatient care and building a “sprawling, ultra-modern nursing home” in the north parcel. The rest of the land would be open to redevelopment.

“The idea is to keep everything on campus and keep the identity of Canandaigua VA,” Flesh said.

There was some disagreement about what should be done with vacated buildings, and the panel chairman, former Congressman Amo Houghton, said they could be rented to businesses or groups.

Some stakeholders, including Gene Simes of Walworth in Wayne County, said they should only be used for veterans’ services.

“This was put together for veterans,” he told Houghton. “Why do you constantly talk about other groups coming in?”

Others said the campus should be open to anyone in the community.

“Veterans have families and friends, they didn’t serve just to get a benefit,” said Robert Van Keuren, homeless coordinator for Veterans Integrated Services Network (VISN 2). “If we have access to property that my mother could use and if there’s something that can be used that brings in money to the VA, then I’m all for it.”

Van Keuren said he was speaking for himself, not on behalf of his employer.

Some stakeholders voiced displeasure about 12 acute psychiatric beds moving from Canandaigua to Buffalo and Syracuse. The panel said that decision was made by Principi and was beyond their control.

After an increasingly heated exchange between the panel and some members of the public, committee member Ralph Calabrese put an end to the discussion.

“I think the need for acute psychiatric beds will grow, but give us a chance to explain [these plans],” he said. “Then you can pick up a pen and paper and demand that [your concerns] get to the secretary of the VA.”

The recommended options will go back to PricewaterhouseCoopers for a more-detailed analysis. Then they’ll be returned to the Local Advisory Panel to present at the first of two more public hearings, which haven’t been scheduled yet.

Attendees also received suggestion forms that could be sent to the VA Department for further consideration.

There are 45 buildings on the 171-acre VA center campus, most of which were built between 1932 and 1937. Approximately 300,000 square feet of the 945,000-square-foot campus is vacant or underused, according to the report by PricewaterhouseCooper, which estimates that if the VA makes no changes there it will continue to operate with substantial vacant and underused space that is costly to maintain and will divert patient care resources to buildings and grounds maintenance.