Sarah Grunau/ Houston Public Media
Ben Taub Hospital, one of the Houston region’s only level 1 trauma facilities, is slated for a major expansion following Harris County commissioners’ recent approval of a plan to condemn part of Hermann Park for the project.
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Though the quiet 9-acre field on the southwest corner of Hermann Park sees few daily visitors — accommodating people recently discharged from the emergency room — it was the site of a heated clash for several months, pitting park conservators against medical professionals.
Before the issue caught traction, it was initially laid out during a public hearing of the Harris Health system board of trustees in July last year. During the hearing, trustees heard no strong opposition to the expansion, and few visitors attended the hearing. Houston Public Media first reported on the eminent domain plan after a legal ad was published in the local newspaper, as required by law.
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Leaders of Harris Health, the county’s public healthcare entity, asked commissioners to approve the project last November. Instead, the commissioners voted unanimously to direct Harris Health to hold additional community meetings before holding a final vote on whether to allow the county’s health entity to continue with eminent domain proceedings for part of the park, which the City of Houston controlled. Within just a few months, the issue drew hundreds of residents to a series of town hall meetings to oppose the project.
Leaders of the health entity returned before commissioners this year to present feedback received during the lively town hall meetings.
While county health officials worked to address concerns during those meetings, park patrons and residents living in the area wanted to know if the expansion sets a precedent that could strip away more park land in the future. They also raised concerns about the project expanding into the 100-year floodplain — making the area potentially more susceptible to flooding.
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Leaders of the Hermann Park Conservancy supported the project, but said they remained mindful of what the public stands to lose.
While Cara Lambright, the conservancy’s president, recognized what county leaders called an urgent public health necessity, she urged that the plan include a provision to address a traffic snarl in the middle of the park.
The conservancy’s own community-informed master plan had included a plan to build a parking garage on the tract of land. It’s unclear how the future hospital expansion will affect projects outlined in the park’s master plan, including ones that would have improved walkability and connections to the local bayou trail.
“This piece of land is a critical part of the master plan, and just like the reflection pool used to be a big mud pit in the middle of the park, you can’t say just because there’s nothing here now that it wasn’t critical to the park’s plan,” former conservancy president Doreen Stoller told Houston Public Media earlier this year.
Lines of traffic waiting to enter the central parking lots can stretch around the park’s perimeter on a busy day. Cambridge Street is also often blocked by cars waiting to enter the park, impeding emergency traffic to the Texas Medical Center, according to the master plan.
The project to expand the hospital was part of a $2.5 billion bond proposition approved by voters in 2023. The hospital expansion — which includes a sky bridge and a new patient tower in the condemned lot to accommodate 100 new patient beds — is estimated to cost more than $400 million.
Leaders of the conservancy were accused by some of not working hard enough to protect park land. Several residents, like Jonna Hitchcock, called on the conservancy to oppose the project in full force.
“Park land never comes back,” she said during a public town hall meeting in January. “I just got back from Manhattan … do you know they wanted to build an airport in Central Park in 1940? Conservancy, behave like a conservancy. Fight this.”
Project raises environmental concerns
After it was revealed that the hospital project would expand into the existing 100-year floodplain, county officials said that development in the high-risk area could still proceed if the structure is built in compliance with flood elevation requirements. During a press conference in March, a representative of Harris Health said that the building would be constructed above the floodplain and the new facility would be floodproof for future events.
Jim Blackburn, an environmental law professor at Rice University, told Hello Houston that the project is poorly planned and goes against what should have been learned in Houston over the years.
“This is the worst of the worst sites in the medical center,” Blackburn said. “I think from a medical standpoint, we do not want level 1 trauma facilities that we are trying to get to during emergencies in an area that is known to be flood-prone because a flood is likely to be one of our biggest emergencies.”
Opponents of the project also raised questions about a provision of Texas law requiring that all possible alternatives be considered and ruled out before an entity moves forward with seizing park land. Though Harris Health vowed to have evaluated all options, they haven’t provided details about why those options are considered impractical.
Harris Health CEO Esmaeil Porsa said that building into the park is the only viable option to expand Ben Taub Hospital. He called suggestions to build on top of the existing facility not feasible, because it would shutter some services and exacerbate capacity issues. He said expanding the facility outside of the medical district is also not an option.
“Ben Taub Hospital is falling apart,” Porsa said during a town hall meeting in November. “There are a lot of infrastructure issues at Ben Taub Hospital. Spending $400 million on top of a structure that we know is rapidly approaching its end of useful life is not a good use of taxpayer money.”
‘Urgent public health need’
Macie Kelly/Houston Public Media
An ambulance at the trauma center entrance of Ben Taub Hospital. July 24, 2019
For months, county leaders worked to counter arguments that the eminent domain project is just an attempt to swipe at park land, claiming there’s an urgent need for the emergency facility that sees thousands of uninsured patients a year.
By 2030, Ben Taub Hospital is expected to need extra capacity for 18,000 more emergency room visits and an additional 3,200 hospital admissions every year, according to a health system presentation. Porsa said that demand was estimated before a $1 billion cut to Medicaid services last year through the Trump administration’s “One Big Beautiful Bill,” and before $800 million in cuts to healthcare funding in Texas.
RELATED: Houston residents criticize plan to seize Hermann Park land for hospital expansion
“And this is not including the hundreds of thousands of Houstonians that we anticipate that are going to be losing access to health insurance when the premiums through the [Affordable Care Act] are going to skyrocket as of January 1,” Porsa said. “The need for Harris Health services are going to exponentially get larger coming in January of next year, just in a few months. The situation, as bad as it is, is going to get a lot worse.”
In its current condition, a backup in the hospital’s emergency rooms results in some patients receiving care in the hallways or waiting up to 24 hours to see a doctor. Health system officials have cited aging infrastructure and a long-time need for modernization as reasons the hospital expansion would have to stretch beyond the existing boundaries of the building. It wouldn’t be possible to close portions of the hospital during construction activities and still provide essential emergency services and meet the health care needs of the public, Porsa said.
Officials said Harris Health has earmarked capital investments in supporting the Ben Taub Hospital infrastructure so it can continue providing services until the hospital can be replaced. That won’t happen until Harris Health goes back to the voters with another bond proposal — which likely won’t happen for another 10 to 15 years. Porsa said not much forethought was given to future expansion needs when the hospital was constructed in the 1980s. Though the city’s medical needs demand at least four to five Level 1 trauma centers, Houston has two, he said.
Just two days before the eminent domain project was approved by county commissioners, Jenna Hampton was released from Ben Taub Hospital in a wheelchair.
“You should’ve seen it last night,” Hampton said. “It was like packed out. It was like at an airport. They had people lined up, and they still got me seen and was able to get medication. Even though I didn’t get my own bed and I was uncomfortable a little bit, it made me realize how much they did.”
Following the approval, Harris Health will enter a design phase of the new patient tower. Letters will be sent to the land owners and other interested parties.
It will take at least three years to break ground on the expansion.