Beilenson Proposes Continued Ban on Sale of Sepulveda VA Land

Rep. Anthony C. Beilenson (D-Los Angeles) introduced legislation Thursday to continue indefinitely a ban on the sale of federal land at the Veterans Administration hospital in Sepulveda, the subject of protests by the families of Little League baseball players from Mission Hills.

Beilenson’s measure would prohibit the sale of 46 acres in Sepulveda, as well as 109 acres at the VA hospital in Westwood.

Congress blocked sale of the land last year by imposing a moratorium that expires in 1988.

The VA declared the land surplus in 1986 as part of a Reagan administration plan to sell federal assets to get money to reduce the federal budget deficit. The Sepulveda tract--about a quarter of the VA hospital site--has been estimated to be worth more than $10 million and the Westwood land more than $200 million.

The plan to sell the land was greeted by protests, particularly from the Mission Hills Little League, which has three baseball diamonds on 7.5 acres it has leased at the Sepulveda site for 18 years. The Little League administers a nine-hole golf course on VA land, which is open to the public but used mostly by hospital patients, in exchange for the property.

“We support it and hope it passes,” Carl E. Carlson, president of the Mission Hills Little League, said of Beilenson’s bill.

Carlson said 440 boys and girls, age 6 through 18, play baseball on the diamonds.

Other protesters argued that the VA will need the land for expansion in the future to meet the needs of many aging World War II and Korean War veterans.

Beilenson said his bill would signify that “we are not willing to sacrifice our veterans’ needs and the small amount of open space left in our community in the name of deficit reduction.” Green-belt buffer zones are valuable in urban areas and “cannot be measured in dollar value alone,” he said.

The VA property in Westwood is in Beilenson’s 23rd District.

Sen. Alan Cranston (D-Calif.) has introduced similar legislation in the Senate.