VA looks at new Reno medical center

Plans for a veterans’ hospital and medical center in the Reno area are being formulated for the thousands of men and women who live in western Nevada and eastern California.

Glenna Smith, spokeswoman for the Reno Veterans Administration Medical Center, said this year’s fiscal year 2023 budget calls for the VA to begin exploring construction of a new medical center that will be built on a new site. The current facility on 975 Kirman Ave., opened May 21, 1939. The building consisted of a three-story, 17,905-square-foot hospital designed to accommodate 24 patients.

“We don’t have a lot of information,” Smith said. “It’s way too early. This is a 10-year project for us.”

One of the early concerns involves the satellite medical centers, and if they will be rolled into a central location. Medical services such as dental and eye care, which are located in separate buildings in the Reno area, will be included in the new facility. Smith said the lack of space at the Kirman Street medical center has necessitated separate locations. Furthermore, she said the satellite facilities that serve veterans in Fallon, Gardnerville and Susanville, Calif., will remain at their present locations to serve Nevadans in rural Nevada.

Smith said facilities such as Fallon’s Lahontan VA Clinic have been providing services to several thousand veterans. The 10,000 square-foot facility had its ceremonial grand opening in January 2018. At the time, the VA said Fallon will serve veterans from six counties: Churchill, Lyon, Mineral, Pershing, Eureka and Lander.

The Lahontan VA Clinic located on New River Parkway offers primary care and specialty health services, including mental health care, nutrition, gynecology, and more.

Smith said the budget will now authorize the VA to apply existing appropriated funds to the scoping process and to purchase land for a state-of-the-art medical facility. She said a site for a new VA medical center has not been determined. She pointed out the VA is easing into a five-year plan which will be ready in 2026 when the details for the new medical center should be ready and a possible groundbreaking could occur in the same year.

“That’s the prediction,” she said.

According to Smith, “the VA will publish opportunities for public involvement as part of the environmental impact statement process and stakeholder outreach, after potential alternatives have been identified.”

The George E. Wahlen Veterans Affairs Medical Center is located in Salt Lake City, Utah, handles patients in northeastern Nevada.

The current Reno medical center operates with 64 hospital and 60 Community Living Center beds. Other departments with beds include the emergency department, intensive care unit and the inpatient psychiatric unit.

The Reno VA Medical Center owes its existence to a Greek immigrant. Ioannis Lougaris had a vision for the Reno area to have a veterans hospital so patients didn’t have to travel 225 miles west to San Francisco. During the 1920s and ‘30s, a trip on a two-lane highway over the Sierra Nevada mountain range was an ordeal, especially during the winter months.

Lougaris immigrated from Greece in 1907 and lived in New York, Chicago and then San Francisco. He became a citizen in 1915. During World War I, Lougaris enlisted in the Army in Oakland, Calif., and was sent to France, where he was wounded on Nov. 10, 1918, the day before an armistice was called between the warring factions.

Once the war ended and he sailed to Newport News, Va., and from there, he boarded the train heading to Letterman Hospital in San Francisco. The train stopped in Sparks and then to Reno, but because of a chance meeting in Sparks with U.S. Sen. Charles B. Henderson of Nevada, Lougaris decided to stay in the Truckee Meadows.

Lougaris eventually taught himself law and passed the Nevada State Bar exam. A practicing attorney, he approached a number of senators and congressmen to approve funds for a veterans’ hospital.

The late Harry Reid, who served Nevada in the U.S. Senate for more than 30 years before retiring in 2017, said, “As a National Executive Committeeman from Nevada, he (Lougaris) made many trips to Washington, D.C., 16 of them at his own expense, endeavoring to get a Veterans Hospital established in Reno.”

More than 40 years later, the VA hospital was named in 1981 for Lougaris. He died in 1987 at the age of 100.