Nearly a year after Hialeah Hospital's parking garage was declared unsafe and shut down, the hospital's chief executive is speaking publicly about how the structure fell into such disrepair — and why a full rebuild won't be finished until November 2027. Crumbling concrete, broken pipes and temporary shoring inside the garage were documented by investigators before the city stepped in and closed it.
The closure came only after the property owner was contacted with photographs of the deteriorating structure, according to a report by NBC 6 South Florida. Luis Allende, who has run Hialeah Hospital since June 26, 2022, told the station that the garage closure happened earlier than the hospital had anticipated and that many of the decisions surrounding it were outside his control. The station reports that its own reporting accelerated the timeline of the closure.
The roots of the problem trace back to the hospital's ownership structure. Hialeah Hospital was controlled by Steward Health Care in 2022, and it was Steward that received a $3 million proposal from contractor Peak CM for permanent repairs to the garage, per the same NBC6 account. Steward approved that repair proposal but then halted the work after the company's financial struggles deepened, according to the report.
A Bankruptcy That Froze Repairs Nationwide
Steward's collapse was not isolated to one garage in Hialeah. The company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in May 2024 with more than $9 billion in liabilities, including $6.6 billion in long-term rent owed to landlord Medical Properties Trust and nearly $1 billion in unpaid vendor bills, according to reporting from the Private Equity Stakeholder Project and CBS News. That collapse restricted capital investment across Steward's entire national network, which helps explain why the garage's permanent repairs stalled even after they had been approved.
Union representatives and hospital employees separately reported widespread operational neglect across Steward's South Florida facilities in late 2024, including broken medical equipment, supply shortages and ambulance diversions at Florida Medical Center, according to a Miami Herald account relayed by EMS1. That pattern of deferred maintenance mirrors what unfolded with the Hialeah Hospital garage before its closure.
Healthcare Systems of America took over operations of Hialeah Hospital in 2024 after a federal bankruptcy court in Texas approved a settlement transferring control of the facility and four other South Florida hospitals from Steward, with final approval granted in October 2024, according to reporting from WLRN. The arrangement let landlord Medical Properties Trust retain ownership of the physical property while installing new management. Steward did not respond to NBC6's request for comment for its report.
What Comes Next For Parking
The property owner previously told NBC6 that the garage would be demolished by December 2025, though the structure remains standing nearly a year after its closure. Crews are expected to begin dismantling the garage piece by piece in the coming weeks, and demolition preparations include shoring up the adjoining medical office building, which must be protected throughout the process since the garage is directly connected to it.
The city has approved plans for the replacement structure, which will rise six stories and include 645 parking spaces, elevators and updated safety systems, according to the same NBC6 report. Hialeah Hospital says it has funding and a plan in place for the new garage, which is expected to be completed in November 2027. During construction, patients and visitors will have to pay to park in the former employee lot — parking will not be free for them, unlike the free parking the hospital provides to its own staff. Hospital employees are instead being shuttled in from a nearby casino where they now park.
A Pattern Of Financial Strain At Hialeah Hospital
The garage saga fits into a broader financial picture that has followed Hialeah Hospital through its ownership changes. In July 2026, the City of Hialeah reached a $2.4 million settlement with Healthcare Systems of America to resolve more than $3 million in delinquent municipal water and sewer bills that had piled up at Hialeah Hospital and Palmetto General Hospital — a dispute Hoodline previously reported on, in which HSA argued the debt belonged to former operator Steward.
HSA has also been mired in litigation over control of its own finances. The company and its South Florida hospital entities sued former CEO Michael Sarian in Miami-Dade County Circuit Court in March 2026, accusing him of attempting to improperly seize control of company bank accounts holding Medicare and Medicaid payments, according to Becker's Hospital Review. The complaint alleges Sarian tried to alter bank signatories after being removed from his corporate role.
Layered on top of the financial turmoil is Miami-Dade County's stricter building safety enforcement. Under regulations updated following Florida statutory changes in May 2022, commercial and multi-story structures must undergo structural and electrical recertification inspections at 40 years of age and every decade afterward, per the Miami-Dade County Department of Regulatory and Economic Resources. The Hialeah Hospital garage had undergone work to try to pass that 40-year recertification before its closure.
Hialeah Hospital, founded in 1951 by Seventh-day Adventist physicians, operates as a 356- to 378-bed acute care facility at 651 East 25th Street and serves as a state-designated Primary Stroke Center and safety-net institution for northwest Miami-Dade County, according to the Florida Agency for Health Care Administration. The garage closure is not the first time a South Florida hospital has had to shut down parking over structural fears — Wellington Regional Medical Center in Palm Beach County closed its own garage in December 2023 after inspectors found an imminent collapse risk in a stairwell, a case Hoodline covered at the time, and that hospital similarly installed temporary shoring and set up off-site shuttles.
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