Sarah Grunau/ Houston Public Media
In the first of a series of town hall meetings about a controversial eminent domain proposal, Harris Health CEO Esmaeil Porsa late Wednesday painted a grim picture of one of the county’s only comprehensive trauma hospitals — Ben Taub is out of room.
Porsa’s presentation about a plan to seize 8 acres of Hermann Park land for a project to expand the hospital was made to a room of about 200 community members Wednesday night and met with lively outbursts about potentially tampering with a beloved city park.
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Representatives of Harris County’s health system, along with county commissioner Rodney Ellis, fought back on the notion that the plan is a hasty attempt to swipe park land. It’s an urgent public health necessity, they said.
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. That demand was estimated before a $1 billion cut to Medicaid services this year through the Trump administration’s “One Big Beautiful Bill,” and before $800 million in cuts to healthcare funding in Texas as of Oct. 1, Porsa said.
“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,” he 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.”
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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, Porsa said. Health system officials have cited aging infrastructure and a longtime 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.
It’s a message Porsa has reiterated during other public discussions about the plan, and in front of county commissioners a few weeks ago. The health system’s meeting on Wednesday was the first of several after commissioners voted unanimously to hold town hall discussions before they make a final vote on whether to allow the county’s heath entity to continue with eminent domain proceedings for part of Hermann Park, a tract of land owned by the city of Houston.
The packed Wednesday meeting represented a stark difference from the health system’s first public hearing on the eminent domain procedures back in July — when the system’s board of trustees heard no strong opposition to the plan.
Instead of a traditional question-and-answer portion of the meeting on Wednesday, organizers directed residents to submit their questions in writing, and a representative of the health system read the submitted notecards aloud for Porsa to answer. But some audience members said that meant their questions were never asked.
Many raised questions about descendants of August Warneke, the late Houston land owner who conditionally deeded the tract of land to the city in 1914 for park use only. A county legal representative said family members of Warneke represent reversionary interest holders in the proceedings. If the eminent domain plan moves forward, the courts will determine the fair market value of the land and Harris Health will be directed to pay those interests out, the legal representative said.
The area was a key part of the Hermann Park Conservancy’s updated master plan last year and one of the last remaining undeveloped parcels in the park. It was once envisioned to be a connection between the park and Brays Bayou, and proposed to provide necessary parking solutions.
It is not exactly clear how the future hospital expansion will affect projects outlined in the master plan, including ones that would have improved walkability and connections to the bayou trail.
In a statement posted to its website this month, the conservancy requested a compensation package in the hospital expansion in order to offset the loss of public land. The funds would be used to accelerate the organization’s publicly-informed master plan, in part by improving parking and creating a recreational trail loop.
“You can’t say just because there’s nothing here now, its not critical to the park’s plans,” Doreen Stoller, the former CEO of the conservancy, told Houston Public Media after the meeting Wednesday. “They put on their slide that this doesn’t affect visitors to the zoo or the Miller (Outdoor) Theatre, but it affects every visitor. Yes, we can go hold our own town hall, but don’t you think if you’re having a public meeting you should give your public the entire facts?”