Northwest corner of University of Nevada, Reno selected for location

The authorization for a new veterans hospital in Reno has taken a major step forward after President Joe Biden signed legislation approving construction.

The Veterans Affairs Major Medical Facility Authorization Act authorizes the development of a new $224 million Veterans Affairs Medical Center to serve veterans from a 20-county area of Nevada and California spanning 110,000 square miles. The George E. Wahlen Department of Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Salt Lake City, Utah, currently handles patients in northeastern Nevada.

In 2023, a Reno spokesperson said the budget had previously authorized the VA to apply existing appropriated funds to the scoping process and to purchase land for a state-of-the-art medical facility.

Biden signed bipartisan legislation last month to authorize construction of the new hospital. Both Nevada Democratic senators, Jacky Rosen and Catherine Cortez Masto, helped introduce the legislation to fund the new medical center.

“I pushed the Biden administration to construct a new VA hospital in Reno because veterans living all across Northern Nevada deserve to have access to world-class health care in a state-of-the-art facility,” Rosen said.

Several sites were initially considered for the new VA medical center, but the senator’s office said the northwest corner of the University of Nevada, Reno, has been selected as the construction site. The 43-acre site is west of the university’s medical school and north of Mackay Stadium.

“Northern Nevada veterans are past due for a new, state-of-the-art veterans hospital, and this funding will kick-start the construction and planning process,” Cortez Masto said. “This is an exciting first step, and I won’t stop until this project is completed and our brave men and women who have served our country have the facility they deserve.”

Before the recent decision, the federal government also considered modernizing the current site, which is located between Kirman Avenue and Locust Street.

“It’s going to cost so much and not even be able to maybe accept the kinds of new technology. So, we knew we needed a new one,” Rosen said.

Rosen’s office said funding had already been allocated to upgrade the current VA hospital. “As they did their assessment, in order to upgrade it with the latest machines—X-ray machines, capabilities, operating rooms, technology, you name it—it actually would be more cost-effective and so much better if we could build a new hospital,” Rosen said. “So, we took the funds that were allocated for upgrades, and these are the initial funding.”

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

The current facility opened May 21, 1939. The building was a three-story, 17,905-square-foot hospital designed to accommodate 24 patients.

The Reno VA Medical Center owes its existence to a Greek immigrant, Ioannis Lougaris, who 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.

A practicing attorney, Lougaris approached a number of senators and congressmen who approved funding for a veterans hospital more than a mile southeast of downtown Reno.

The VA said satellite facilities serving veterans in Fallon, Gardnerville and Susanville, Calif., will remain at their present locations to serve Nevadans in rural areas. Fallon’s Lahontan VA Clinic has been providing services to several thousand veterans. The 10,000-square-foot facility opened in January 2018 to serve veterans from six counties.

“I’m so excited because our veterans, they really sign on that dotted line with an oath to protect and defend the United States, our Constitution,” Rosen said. “They’re willing to sacrifice their lives. So, it’s our sacred obligation, I believe, to be sure that they’re taken care of when they come home.”