Crumbling concrete, broken pipes and temporary shoring. That’s what NBC6 Investigates found inside the Hialeah Hospital parking garage before it was declared unsafe and closed.
Luis Allende has been running Hialeah Hospital since 2022, when it was still under the control of Steward Health Care.
“I’ve been here four years now since June 26 of 2022,” Allende said.
It was precisely in 2022 that, our investigation revealed, temporary shoring was placed in the hospital’s parking garage as work began to pass the 40-year recertification. The following year, contractor Peak CM told us they submitted a $3 million proposal to Steward for permanent repairs that was never approved.
The parking garage at Hialeah Hospital closed just after NBC6 Investigators started looking into the conditions it was in. Chipped concrete, broken pipes, and temporary shoring that we found were put in place almost three years ago. NBC6’s Myriam Masihy reports.
Allende said that at the time, many of those decisions were out of his control.
“During that time, Steward was going through the financial struggles, so they started the first part of the project, which was the shoring, and the second part was the eventual fixing, the stuff that engineers do. That all stopped with the bankruptcy,” Allende said.
In 2024, Healthcare Systems of America, or HSA, took over operations of the hospital. Then, in September of 2025, after viewers called us concerned about the garage, we documented the deteriorating conditions. Hours after we contacted the property owner with photos of what we found, the city shut down the structure, declaring it unsafe.
When asked why the hospital had not forced the garage to close earlier, Allende said the closure was already part of the plan.
“It was in the process. I’m not going to lie to you. It happened before we were expecting it to happen, but it was part of the project, of the plan. It was going to be closed, and we were working on a plan. The plan was accelerated,” Allende said.
When asked if NBC6’s reporting accelerated the closure, Allende responded, “Yes.”
Nearly a year later, the garage is still standing, even though the property owner previously told us it would be demolished by last December.
Allende said part of the delay is because the garage is connected to a medical office building that has to be protected during demolition.
“We’re in the beginning stages of, again, shoring the medical office building to make sure that once we demolish the parking garage, the medical office building is not impacted,” he said.
Allende says crews will begin dismantling the garage piece by piece in the coming weeks, and plans for its replacement have already been approved by the city.
The new six-story garage will have 645 parking spaces, elevators and updated safety systems. Allende says this time, the funding and the plan are in place, with completion expected by November 2027.
“Today I am happy to say that the money is there, the permits are there, the people, the vendors are working on it and now we see the light at the end of the tunnel,” Allende said.
In the meantime, patients and visitors will have to pay to park in what used to be the employee lot, despite what the property owner previously told us – that parking was going to be free during construction.
“That was not a true statement. So there is no free parking,” Allende said.
Allende said free parking is being provided to employees, who are parking at a nearby casino and being shuttled to the hospital.
During our investigation, we reached out to Steward Health Care but did not hear back.