Frustration With Hospital Eminent Domain
Many States allow hospitals to condemn. In these States, the hospitals are regulated by the State and expansions of hospitals are considered to be public uses. This emanates out of the historical context of most communities creating their own hospital systems. At this time many hospitals mostly non-profit, but private just the same have the power to condemn. As such, hospitals seek to control their destiny by assuring that the property around the hospital is used in conformity with the hospital use. However, private developers can construct the same medical office development as the hospital. This makes for frequent fights between adjacent landowners and hospital authorities.
Eminent domain, the principle that allows government to force a landowner to sell, is usually thought of as serving public purposes, like building new highways. But in the last two years Dallas County's public hospital district has been adventuring in a new version — eminent domain for profit.
Acting on a 2008 consultant's proposal, Parkland Memorial Hospital has been acquiring far more land than it requires for its new $1.3 billion hospital building and campus, some of it as far as half a mile from the construction site, which sits two and a half miles northeast of downtown on Harry Hines Boulevard.
Why? So when the value of the land goes up, Parkland can make money.
