LR vets center, detractors mend fences

Estella Morris considers the Veterans Day Treatment Center in downtown Little Rock a good neighbor.

The director of the Central Arkansas Veterans Healthcare System's center for honorably discharged veterans knows her facility, opened in March 2013, has to be. People are watching.

"I think we've been good neighbors," Morris said. "That was always our intent."

As its name states, the center is not an overnight shelter, but it does offer a range of programs to the veterans -- many of whom are or have recently been homeless -- who visit on weekdays. Those programs include assisting with locating permanent housing and helping veterans with noncriminal legal problems such as child support issues and bankruptcy filings.

The center, with its staff of about 40, is open from 7 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. weekdays, Morris said. Between 90 and 100 veterans visit on an average day.

But when officials first announced that the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs was moving its drop-in clinic from Second and Ringo streets to the new location at 1000 Main St., some business and residential neighbors in the Main Street area objected. They feared that opening the center in the abandoned home of a Cook Jeep-Chrysler automobile dealership would attract more homeless people to the area.

There were also fears expressed that more substance-abuse problems would surface in the area, especially with the center sitting directly across the street from a liquor store.

The debate over the new location of the day treatment center raged for roughly three months in early 2012.

City and state leaders joined the fray. U.S. Rep. Jeff Miller, R-Fla., chairman of the U.S. House Committee on Veterans Affairs, visited for meetings about the new location of the center. Zoning and land use were checked and other sites suggested.

In the end, the VA said it had already signed an option to lease the property after a more than two-year search and that its old location, opened in 1996, was cramped and veterans needed a new, larger center.

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LR vets center, detractors mend fences