Florida town anguishes over future of deadly condo collapse site
SURFSIDE, Fla. - Town leaders are set to decide Wednesday on a divisive plan for an oceanfront condo project that would rise in place of Champlain Towers South, where 98 people died two years ago in a sudden collapse that horrified the nation and led to widespread building safety revisions in Florida.
The Town Commission's vote - an effort to begin moving on from that disaster, though its official cause remains undetermined - will probably be steeped in the same anguish and anger that has consumed this beach town of 6,000 residents since at least last fall.
Families of the victims, joined by former commissioners who were in office at the time of the collapse, adamantly oppose the design for the 45-unit luxury building. They've decried it as "a stain" that minimizes how those who died will be honored because, among other details, it calls for the building's trash to be collected near the entrance of a memorial park.
Mayor Shlomo Danzinger and two colleagues on the five-member board have said the plan strikes a balance between marking the tragedy and allowing what the developer is legally entitled to build. The debate, made more bitter by town politics, has led to frequent shouting matches during meetings and accusations that some people are trying to politicize the grief of victims' families.
"Jerry Springer had nothing on this place," a resident told the commission this month after an especially raucous exchange, the kind frequently seen on that long-running tabloid talk show.
At issue is whether a block of 88th Street, which is next to the site at 8777 Collins Ave., should be closed for a memorial park and pedestrian plaza. A resolution unanimously approved by the previous Town Commission in January 2022 called for traffic to be mostly limited to emergency vehicles.
"I was desperate to protect the families because, you know, my friends died there," said former Town Commissioner Eliana Salzhauer, who sponsored the resolution. "Everybody knew somebody who died there."
But this spring's elections gave Danzinger and two other new commissioners a majority. The board now seems ready to approve the site's Dubai-based developer to place a covered loading dock entrance on 88th street, reclaiming a third of the block to enable certain building functions.
DAMAC International says large moving trucks backing in or out of a loading dock off Collins Avenue - where critics of the plan want it placed - would create a traffic hazard where the state road angles sharply at the site. The developer maintains it is following state guidelines, though Florida transportation officials say they have not dictated what should go where.
"We're basically on a blind curve," said Jeffery Rossely, DAMAC's senior vice president for concepts and design.
The street would still feature a memorial park on the east end, past the loading dock, with new grading and landscaping off Collins to indicate a "transition" into that reflective space, said Town Manager Hector Gomez. "It's just that it will have a vehicular component to it, which is going to be rebeautified," he said. "Ultimately, the end result will be a proper memorial."
Victims' relatives consider the prospect of moving trucks rumbling over the site where their loved ones died, and garbage being retrieved nearby, "insulting" or worse. They're further incensed by the likelihood that the memorial, which DAMAC has agreed to help build, won't be finished until after the 12-floor condo project is constructed, which could take several years. Gomez said the town is close to choosing a designer for the memorial.
A rally scheduled to take place outside of Town Hall before Wednesday night's vote will highlight the deep emotions.
"We have nothing on the site of the collapse, and we don't know what we're getting on 88th Street because they keep cutting it down to benefit the developer," said Martin Langesfeld, whose sister and brother-in-law, Nicole Langesfeld and Luis Sadovnic, died in the collapse.
Frustrations and uncertainties have plagued the recovery process since a major section of Champlain Towers South gave way about 1:22 a.m. on June 24, 2021. Federal investigators, who have been focused on construction flaws in the building's pool deck, said this month that determining the cause of the disaster is still a couple of years away.
A Florida law passed in 2022 requires that older condominium and co-op buildings now be inspected for structural integrity every 10 years. The requirement applies first to buildings within three miles of the coastline that are at least 25 years old; previously, buildings older than 40 years had to undergo such inspections. Surfside has 31 properties awaiting inspection.
Condominium association groups call the new law an overreaction to a unique tragedy potentially caused by a variety of factors, and one that could impose unnecessary or onerous expenses on homeowners.
"It's one of those things where the cure is worse than the disease," said Martin A. Schwartz, a Miami attorney whose law firm represents condominium associations. Lower-income residents in buildings where inspections result in mandated repairs may be forced to move if their maintenance fees increase significantly. "We have other buildings in Florida that are 50, 60 and even 70 years old, and they're not falling down."
In Surfside, where pumps drain ocean water from the Champlain site, the push for a permanent memorial has been dogged by accusations of wrongdoing. Victims' families and their supporters have blasted Danzinger, saying he is catering to the developer's wishes as part of an agenda to attract more high-end condo projects.
"If they wanted what we wanted, they wouldn't even be talking to developers," said former mayor Charles Burkett, a slow-growth advocate who plans to challenge Danzinger in March. "They'd be saying: `Listen, build your building. We're happy you're here. But here's what we need you to do.' "
The mayor and his allies say they intend to honor the victims but are limited by DAMAC's property rights on what they can dictate. The company bought the property for $120 million after a Miami-Dade County judge ordered last year that it be sold to help raise money for what became a $1.2 billion court settlement agreement for the families as well as Champlain Towers South unit owners who either survived the collapse or were away when it happened.
"It's very difficult, as you have a lot of people who are emotional, and rightfully so, versus what is essentially allowed by right," Danzinger said on Tuesday. "When the town staff comes forward and says this meets code, that's what we have to judge."
The acrimony around the plan intensified last October when Danzinger had lunch with DAMAC founder Hussain Sajwani at his home in Dubai, triggering speculation that an informal agreement had been reached. Danzinger has said that he stopped there during a self-financed trip to the Middle East as his son was beginning service in the Israel Defense Forces and that he conveyed the town's interest in having part of a memorial located within the property's footprint.
A proposal to relax town height requirements at the site, to make the footprint idea feasible, failed this summer.
Last month, fireworks erupted again when Danzinger and his two allies on the commission were seen with several members of Surfside's planning and zoning board at a local hotel bar two days before that board endorsed the DAMAC project.
The plan's critics suspected collusion, in violation of the state's government transparency law. Burkett circulated a bar photo that showed the planning and zoning board chair, Caroline Baumel, smiling into the camera while seated on the laps of Vice Mayor Jeffrey Rose and David Forbes, another board member.
Baumel and the others called the suggestion of impropriety "disgusting" and said they all met casually for drinks, discussing, among other things, their excitement over Lionel Messi joining the Inter Miami soccer team. "At no time did any of us discuss anything on this agenda, past agendas or upcoming agendas," a visibly angry Forbes said at the board's subsequent meeting.
Things have only become nastier since then: The Miami-Dade state attorney's office was asked to investigate whether open meeting laws were violated, and supporters and opponents of the DAMAC project have openly mocked each other.
At this month's meeting, former commissioner Salzhauer argued heatedly with the mayor over whether members of the public should be allowed to comment before or after planning board member Forbes made a statement again defending the hotel bar get-together.
"You want me to give feedback on a presentation that hasn't happened yet?" she pressed Danzinger. "You call yourselves representatives of the people. You are serving yourself."
David Rodán grimaced at the display, worried the vitriol will further diminish how the memories of his dead brother, Moises, two cousins and one cousin's wife are honored by the town.
The constant fighting "is not good for us," Rodán said later, his voice growing hoarse with emotion. "It brings back trauma that no one wants to be living. My blood boils for days after going there."
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