County votes to buy, revive shuttered Riverside
Three years after Riverside General Hospital closed its doors amid a financial scandal and bankruptcy, the Harris County Commissioners Court voted unanimously Tuesday to buy the hospital’s shuttered Third Ward facility, a move that signaled the revival of the storied health care institution after years of turbulence and uncertainty over its future.
Opened in the 1920s to serve Houston’s black patients, Riverside General likely would become a clinic with an integrated mental health component — and other health care services to-be-determined — to address what officials say is a critical need for such services in the area. However, details of the facility’s future have not been fleshed out yet.
Rehabilitation of the buildings is expected to cost about $18 million. The four-acre campus has four buildings, three of which the county considers historic and a fourth built in the 1960s the county is proposing to tear down.
“You’ve got this historic property in the Third Ward; it would be a shame to see it go away,” said Harris County Judge Ed Emmett. “We have a great need for mental health facilities.”
Emmett estimated a new facility would be able to handle roughly 100 patients at a time.
The purchase, which will be financed by an approximately $5.35 million grant from nonprofit Houston Endowment Inc., met with widespread praise Tuesday.
“Today’s action preserves the
historic hospital and provides a pathway to create communitybased services,” Mayor Sylvester Turner said in a statement. “There is an urgent need for additional mental health care facilities along with detoxification treatment options. … The city of Houston looks forward to partnering with Harris County and hearing more about the county’s plans to operate the facility.”
Judge’s approval required
A federal judge still will have to sign off on the county’s purchase. A hearing is scheduled for Thursday in bankruptcy court.
“We have our fingers crossed that the bankruptcy judge will approve the sale and this thing will continue to move forward,” said Ann Stern, president and CEO of the Houston Endowment.
She said the nonprofit organization saw the project as an opportunity to address both mental health and substance abuse needs as well as to “preserve a historical and culturally meaningful place.”
The endowment could help raise funds to pay for the rehabilitation, Stern and others said.
The move to secure Riverside comes as Houston’s Third Ward faces increasing gentrification pressures and some public officials have waged a concerted campaign to minimize displacement of residents in the historically African-American neighborhood. Securing Riverside was an important part of that campaign, said state Rep. Garnet Coleman, D-Houston, who was credited as being instrumental in securing the purchase.
“It could have become town houses and everything be razed,” Coleman said.
The bankruptcy proceedings, which began in 2016, gave public officials the unique opportunity to move, Coleman said.
Riverside’s historic flagship campus in Third Ward opened in 1927 to treat black patients. The health care center was known as Houston Negro Hospital until 1961. In later years, the hospital became one of the state’s largest providers of substance abuse and mental health treatment with a network of four campuses across the city.
‘Sentimental attachment’
In 2012, federal agents descended on the hospital’s main campus and seized records. By 2014, Riverside General Hospital was crippled by scandal and mismanagement. A federal health care prosecution uncovered a $160 million Medicare billing scam at Riverside that ensnared a dozen hospital officials. A threemember committee of conservators took control of the hospital in April 2014.
Former CEO Earnest Gibson III and three others, including his son, Earnest Gibson IV, were found guilty at trial in 2014. The former CEO, now 73, is serving 45 years in prison. His righthand man, Mohammad Khan, is serving 40. Earnest Gibson IV is serving a 20-year sentence, and Regina Askew, who rose from a case worker position to become an in-house hospital auditor, is doing 12 years.
A FEMA audit released in September 2015 determined that Riverside officials mismanaged a $32 million Hurricane Ike recovery grant by using taxpayer funds for gift cards, general hospital operations and other expenses not associated with storm repairs. The audit also found the conservators failed to stop the abuse.
Emmett said as part of the deal approved Tuesday that the county has up to seven years to rehabilitate and reopen Riverside, but “hopefully it won’t take anywhere near that long.”
“I have a lot of sentimental attachment to it,” said Harris County Precinct 1 Commissioner Rodney Ellis, who said he was born in Riverside. “I think it’s a great project; I think it’s important that it have some health-related purpose, but one that fits within the needs of contemporary Houston and Harris County.”
Ellis called for a review to determine what sorts of services a new facility should provide.