By Nora Kowalczyk
BUFFALO — On Veterans Day, the main hospital for Western New York’s veterans is the same building it has been since 1949: the 1.4-million-square-foot, 154-bed VA Medical Center on Bailey Avenue. Four years after a plan to replace it with a new hospital worth about $1 billion was announced, the federal Department of Veterans Affairs says no replacement is planned.
Veterans Affairs Secretary Doug Collins said so plainly in an interview with WBEN on Monday, two days before the holiday. “Right now it’s very expensive to build a new facility,” Mr. Collins told the station. “It’s about a billion-and-a-half dollars to build a new hospital, which is way overpriced. A private hospital could build one for far less and a lot quicker. We have too much red tape involved in our construction process.”
Instead, Mr. Collins said, the department is spending on repairs and on care outside VA walls. He told WBEN the VA has invested $5 billion in infrastructure improvements over the past year, and pointed to the growth of community care, the program that lets veterans see private doctors at VA expense when VA care is too far away or the wait is too long. “This past fiscal year we spent over $50 billion across the country in community care payments, which help not only our veterans get the care they need, but it also helps private practices, especially rural hospitals with income that helps them as well,” he said.
How the replacement plan rose and fell
The idea of a new hospital took shape in March 2022, when a proposal for a new VA hospital in Buffalo of about $1 billion was announced, WBEN reported at the time. Then-Rep. Brian Higgins described the choice the VA faced after assessing the Bailey Avenue building. “There’s $300 million in improvements that are needed and it’s 70 years old. So it’s a facility that has limited capability to address the modern healthcare system that we need to take care of our veterans here,” Mr. Higgins said on WBEN. “So you spend $300 million to rehab an old building, or $1 billion to do a new building. That’s where we’re at.”
Planners looked at the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus downtown, near Roswell Park and the University at Buffalo’s medical school. Mr. Higgins said then that the location had advantages and drawbacks. “They looked at the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus and the synergy with places like Roswell, with places like the UB Medical School make some sense, but you’re in a more densely developed corridor there. So there’s issues of neighborhood preservation, there’s issues of parking,” he said.
The money did not last. WBEN has reported that the more than $1 billion allocated in 2022 was withdrawn in February 2024, under the previous administration. That month, Buffalo Business First reported that VA Western New York Healthcare System planned upgrades at the Bailey Avenue hospital instead. Also in 2024, the medical center’s director and chief of staff were removed from their posts after reports that local veterans had faced significant delays in critical treatment, WBEN reported.
Kennedy’s case for a new building
Rep. Tim Kennedy, the Buffalo Democrat who succeeded Mr. Higgins, has pressed for a replacement. Speaking to WBEN for a Veterans Day report a year ago, he described the building’s condition. “The façade is crumbling, the carpeting is old, the HVAC system needs to be replaced,” Mr. Kennedy said. “It’s shame, the doctors need a better hospital to treat their patients and we owe that to our veterans.”
In that same report, Mr. Collins said he understood that the Bailey Avenue complex was 76 years old, but cautioned that the average VA hospital nationally is more than 60 years old.
What the VA is spending on Bailey Avenue
The VA’s own records show the repair approach at work. In a release on its Non-recurring Maintenance program, VA Western New York Healthcare System listed Buffalo projects including a $4.4 million domestic water riser replacement, a $1.6 million “SPS renovation modification,” and an $800,000 carbon dioxide room, all awarded, plus a urology renovation and an underground fuel tank replacement each estimated at $5 million to $10 million and still pending. The work is part of what the VA called a record $4.8 billion in national maintenance spending in fiscal 2026.
“This funding allows VA WNY Healthcare System to continue modernizing and improving, so our facility remains safe, efficient, and equipped to provide high-quality care for our Veterans in WNY Region,” said Danielle L. Bergman, the system’s executive director.
The system also reports better quality marks. In May, it announced that VA Western New York Healthcare System received a five-star rating, the highest, in the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services’ annual Overall Hospital Quality Star Ratings, up from four stars a year earlier. “Receiving a 5-star rating from CMS is a reflection of the dedication our entire team brings to caring for Veterans every day,” Ms. Bergman said in that release.
What remains unanswered
The VA has not published a cost estimate for keeping Bailey Avenue in service for the long term, or a comparison with the cost of a new building, in any document the Chronicle could find. The 2022 figure Mr. Higgins cited, $300 million in needed improvements, is now four years old. Mr. Collins’s $1.5 billion estimate for a new hospital and his call to cut construction red tape point to one way the question could be reopened; Mr. Kennedy’s push in Congress points to another.
The Chronicle is asking VA Western New York Healthcare System for its current estimate of deferred maintenance at the Bailey Avenue hospital and whether any replacement study remains on file, and will update this story with any response.
For veterans this week
Veterans can get free dental care on Friday, Nov. 13, from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the UB Dental Clinic in Squire Hall on UB’s South Campus, during the University at Buffalo School of Dental Medicine’s 12th annual Dentistry Smiles on Veterans day. The school says veterans do not receive dental benefits through the VA, and that the program has provided more than $700,000 in free dental work to more than 2,000 Western New York veterans since 2014. “It is an honor to give back to those who have given so much to our country,” said Marcelo Araujo, the school’s dean.
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