Jane and John Justin Tower Expansion — Texas Health Harris Methodist Fort Worth

Adding floors to a working hospital is about as hard as healthcare construction gets. Texas Health Resources is doing it anyway — a $250 million vertical expansion putting four to five new levels on top of the Jane and John Justin Tower at Harris Methodist Hospital Fort Worth, with the permit filed in July 2026 and work slated to start in August.

Project Scope

Roughly 170,000 square feet of new floor area, at about 34,000 square feet per level. That’s a mid-rise hospital’s worth of program stacked onto a structure that’s already full of patients.

Floors 11 and 12 become the Jane and John Justin Center for Women & Infants: labor and delivery, nursery, dedicated operating rooms, antepartum and postpartum rooms, gynecology beds, and an obstetrics emergency department with its own entrance. Two of the new levels are left as shell space. Concurrent renovation of two existing floors expands the NICU and adds a surgical trauma progressive care unit. Net addition across the whole program is 71 patient rooms.

HKS is the architect. Texas Health has not named a general contractor.

One date discrepancy is worth flagging: the building permit lists September 2028 for completion, while Texas Health’s own communications reference 2029. Interior renovation of the two existing tower floors is already underway and opens later in 2026.

Why It Matters

Vertical additions on occupied acute-care buildings are a structural problem before they’re a construction problem. The existing frame and foundations either have the reserve capacity or they don’t, and the shell floors suggest this one has more than the program currently needs. Everything after that is logistics — crane placement over a live campus, shoring and column transfers, vibration and noise limits with patients two floors below, and infection-control barriers that hold for two years.

The program choice says something about where health systems are putting money. Not more medical-surgical beds, but obstetrics with its own emergency entrance, an expanded NICU and trauma progressive care. Those are the services that draw volume and can’t be moved to an outpatient box down the road.

Project Team & Details