Surfside Approves Luxury Condos at Site of Building Collapse

The Town Commission in Surfside, FL has approved a Dubai-based developer’s plan to build a luxury condo tower on the site where an apartment building collapsed two years ago, killing 98 people.

Damac International’s plan for a new tower on the site where the Champlain Towers South building collapsed got the green light by a 3-2 vote after a six-hour debate in which relatives of the victims denounced the placement of a trash loading dock next to space designated for a memorial that is planned for the people who died in the building collapse.

Damac acquired the 1.8-acre, oceanfront property for $120M in a court-ordered sale last year. The company is planning to build a 12-story building with 52 units, to be designed by Zaha Hadid Architects.

Plans to use the end of 88th Street as a construction staging area, potentially delaying construction of the memorial, and to permanently share a portion of the roadway with garbage trucks and heavy machinery drew protests from relatives of the building collapse victims, according to a report in the Miami Herald.

As a result, the Commission majority applied two conditions to its approval-relocating the new condo tower’s access point for garbage pickup and a loading dock from 88th Street to Collins Avenue, and moving the tower’s construction staging area access from 88th Street to Collins Avenue-in order to enable the memorial to be completed before the new tower.

However, both of these changes must be approved by Miami-Dade County and the Florida Department of Transportation. If those approvals are not granted, the developer will get a green light to proceed with the original plans.

Last year, the Town Commission approved a resolution calling for a permanent memorial to occupy the entire street-end on 88th Street and to close the roadway to traffic with the exception of emergency vehicles. Damac has offered Surfside a $1.5M donation for the construction of a park where the memorial would be built.

However, in August, Surfside’s Planning and Zoning Board voted 4-1 to approve Damac’s proposal, including the use of 88th Street as an access point for garbage pick-up and a loading dock, based in part on statements by the developer that the Florida Department of Transportation had told them to keep trash and loading facilities off of Collins Avenue, the Herald reported.

The FL DOT denies that it instructed the developer to avoid using Collins as the truck route, the newspaper said.

Opponents to the truck access plan using 88th Street noted that out of 28 properties on Collins Avenue, 16 have truck access toward Collins. Protestors at the Commission meeting last Wednesday carried signs that read “No loading dock on 88th-Let’s honor the victims, not the developers.”

Martin Langesfeld, whose sister, her husband and two cousins died in the building collapse, said “we are simply asking for respect.”

“We’re tired of being here. It hurts,” Langesfeld said, the Herald reported. “Try to find a way [to] put the loading dock on Collins Avenue. The building right next door did it.” After the Commission vote, Damac issued a statement: “The divisiveness surrounding this submission is unfortunate. We believe the conditional approval of the site plan establishes a new way forward towards better collaboration between all stakeholders.”

In June, the National Institute of Standards and Technology issued a preliminary summary in an ongoing federal investigation of the Champlain Towers South collapse that identified weaknesses in the building’s pool deck as the origin of the collapse.

In May 2022, Damac was the only bidder to submit an offer by a court-imposed deadline for the Champlain Towers South.

In Dubai, Damac has developed several high-profile projects, including Aykon City, a cluster of four residential towers that includes an entertainment and retail place, the 63-story Paramount Tower Hotel and Damac Towers, which includes 1,200 residential units.

Shortly before Damac made the sole bid for the Champlain Towers South property, families of victims of the building collapse reached a $997M settlement with local officials, developers of an adjacent building-which was putting in a foundation in close proximity to the Champlain pool deck-and others they said were responsible for the collapse of the 40-year-old, 12-story oceanfront tower during the early hours of June 24, 2021.