BUTLER TWP — VA Butler Healthcare officials are waiting to see a conclusion to the legal debates surrounding the proposed health care facility in Center Township.

Dr. Timothy Burke, acting director of the center, hopes the project will stay at the currently proposed site, which is on the Herald farm about 1.5 miles north of the existing VA facility on New Castle Road.

“This has taken far too long for the veterans of Butler and the surrounding counties,” Burke said, adding that the project has been in development since 2007. “We need to stop the legal haggling and move ahead.”

Burke said the VA has been speaking with the developer of the facility, Cambridge Healthcare Solutions, regularly since a stop work order was lifted on the project in June.

“We’ve made great progress in designing it,” he said. “They’ve been very receptive to our ideas. We’re working to come up with the best configuration to serve the next 20 years.”

However, whether or not Cambridge will build the center on the farm remains to be decided in court.

An unsuccessful developer who bid on the project filed a lawsuit in June asking a federal judge to order the government to revisit its bidding process.

The 168,000-square-foot facility originally was to be built on the Deshon Woods property in Butler Township, adjacent to the current facility.

But the lease with the original developer, Westar Development, was canceled in 2013 following a government investigation into fraud allegations made against a high-ranking Westar employee.

The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs awarded the project to Cambridge on Dec. 31 following a second round of bidding.

Oxford Development, which had an agreement to buy the Deshon Woods property if it was awarded the bid, in January challenged the new decision through the U.S. Government Accountability Office.

That protest was dismissed in May after the GAO decided the VA must repay Oxford for its costs in preparing the bid.

Oxford then on June 26 filed a protest in Federal Claims Court, again alleging the government improperly handled the second round of bidding.

Burke said he expects the judge hearing the case to issue a ruling late this month or in early September.

Burke said the judge can either rule against Oxford and uphold the VA’s current lease with Cambridge or rule that the bidding process was flawed.

If that were to happen, the judge could either award the bid to Oxford or order the government to restart the bid process.

“We have no idea what the decision will be,” Burke said.

The ongoing legal debate has become tiresome for leaders at VA Butler.

“We’re almost numb to it,” said Ken Kalberer, a health systems specialist with VA Butler.

Kalberer said there is little the VA Butler leaders can do about the litigation.

“In a lot of ways, we’re the customer,” Kalberer said. “We have to sit here and wait for the product to be delivered.”

The lease with Cambridge states the company has 31 months to build the center from the start of this year.

However, the five months that the stop work order was in effect do not count against the deadline, meaning the project’s deadline is near the end of 2017 should it continue in Center Township.

Burke said VA Butler had little involvement in picking the new site.

Local VA officials were involved with a technical evaluation of the sites, but the VA’s Construction and Facility Management Office led that process.

“That was our only involvement,” Burke said.

Burke said those evaluations focused on building and site plans presented by the prospective developers, and were only a part of the criteria the VA ultimately used to make its decision.

Burke said a number of local and federal officials attended the technical evaluation conference in February 2014. There they reviewed proposals made by the same four developers originally in contention for the lease, minus Westar.

“They had a chance to revamp their proposals and compete again,” he said.

Burke said each of those four proposed sites fit the VA’s original needs for a new facility. Those needs were determined through a 2007 market study.

Burke said there was not a definitive conclusion following the technical evaluations.

“I don’t think we came out with a clear-cut favorite,” he said. “But there were a couple that were preferred, and I’ll leave it at that.”

Kalberer said VA Butler’s involvement in the selection process ended after that meeting.

“Despite frequent inquiries, we didn’t have our questions answered,” Kalberer said.

The VA Construction Office used the technical evaluation, along with bid prices and “intangibles” to make its decision, Burke said.

VA Butler officials were told of the deal with Cambridge the same day as the public — New Year’s Eve.

“It was news to us,” Kalberer said of that announcement. “It was news to everybody.”

VA Butler was unable to work with Cambridge following Oxford’s complaint to the GAO due to the stop work order. Oxford initially requested the federal judge issue an injunction on the project as well, but later withdrew the request.

U.S. Rep. Mike Kelly attempted to organize a meeting for Aug. 27 at the American Legion Hall in Lyndora to get answers about why Cambridge was awarded the bid.

Representatives for the VA and Cambridge were asked to attend and answer questions about the site. But due to the legal action surrounding the project, neither federal VA officials nor Cambridge officials would attend.

Burke said the leadership at VA Butler Healthcare was disappointed with that.

Burke said the Butler facility is often associated directly with federal administration in the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, even though it has little to do in the bids process.

“People lump everything together,” he said. “We were looking for the opportunity to support Congressman Kelly at his town hall meeting.”

Burke said he doesn’t want people to get the wrong impression.

“We don’t want to come across like we’re holding back information,” Burke said. “But we can’t speak to what happened after the (technical evaluations) to lead to the decision to award one bid over the other.”

Burke added he understood the concerns of federal VA officials on speaking about the project.

“Often times it’s difficult to speak when something is under litigation,” he said.

For now, VA Butler officials said they have little option but to wait and see what unfolds.

“If this gets built, great,” Burke said of the facility. “It’s the right thing to do. If not, then we’ll make (the current campus) work — although that would be an expensive proposition — to provide exceptional care.”