Aurora: The $328 Million Hospital That Cost $1.7 Billion
The Rocky Mountain Regional VA Medical Center in Aurora, Colorado, was supposed to replace a cramped World War II-era hospital for 83,000 Denver-area veterans. The VA's early estimate: $328 million. The final price: just under $1.7 billion — the most expensive hospital in VA history, and the project that finally cost the VA the legal authority to build its own hospitals.
How a hospital quintuples
Investigators — GAO, the VA's inspector general, and congressional committees — converged on the same autopsy. The VA chose a lavish design (a $100-million-plus atrium with curving wood walls and towering glass), adopted a complicated contract structure its own staff didn't fully understand, changed designs repeatedly, and failed to get designers and builders to agree on plans and costs before building. Rooms had to be refashioned because equipment didn't fit; "no one had bothered to measure." A 2013 GAO report found Aurora's cost had risen 144% — and that the VA's other three major hospital projects, in Orlando, Las Vegas and New Orleans, were also over budget and 14 to 74 months late, a combined $1.5 billion in cost growth.
Halfway through, the project's own builder won a ruling from the Civilian Board of Contract Appeals giving it the legal option to walk away from the VA entirely. The builder stayed only once the Army Corps of Engineers took over management. In 2015, Congress funded the completion — and stripped the VA of authority to manage large construction projects, handing it to the Corps.
The bonuses, and the ending
While the projects spiraled, executives overseeing the VA's problem construction portfolio collected bonuses reported at some $22 million over six years. When Aurora finally opened in 2018 — five years late — the accountability ledger closed like this, as Colorado Public Radio reported it: Congress demanded firings; the VA said it was ready to fire one executive and was investigating another; both retired before the agency could act. Others were demoted or transferred. "No one was let go or criminally charged."
The hospital itself, by all accounts, serves veterans well today. That was never the question. The question is what it means when a $1.4 billion overrun — a sum larger than the entire annual budget of some federal agencies — produces hearings, reports, and not a single firing that stuck.
Sources: GAO reports on VA construction (2013 and following); Colorado Public Radio, Aurora's Delayed, Budget-Busting VA Hospital Finally Opens (July 2018); Associated Press via Military Times (2015); Washington Post reporting on project costs. Part of the VA Fraud record.