Champlain site builder said state requires loading dock near memorial. FDOT cries foul

A proposed luxury condo project at the site of the Champlain Towers South collapse in Surfside received a key approval Thursday, despite concerns from victims’ family members that a developer plans to use an adjacent street designated as a memorial as an access point for garbage pickup and a loading dock.

The town’s Planning and Zoning Board voted, 4-1, to send the proposal by Dubai-based developer DAMAC International to the Town Commission with a favorable recommendation, based in part on statements by the developers that the Florida Department of Transportation had told them to keep their trash and loading facilities off of Collins Avenue.

“They directed us to put our loading on 88th Street,” DAMAC representative James Galvin said. “We have to follow what they’re telling us to do.”

The state agency said Friday that it never gave such an instruction.

A spokesperson said the issue of where the new development’s loading dock should go “was not discussed” during a meeting between FDOT and the developer’s representatives on Aug. 2.

“The only request from FDOT was driveway access onto SR A1A/Collins Avenue,” said FDOT spokesperson Tish Burgher. Galvin’s statements, Burgher said, “do not accurately reflect our communications to date.”

Burgher also rebuffed a claim by DAMAC at Thursday’s meeting that FDOT officials had been aware of a January 2022 resolution by the Surfside Town Commission to designate 88th Street east of Collins Avenue as a memorial, and that state officials “kind of don’t care” about the resolution.

Burgher said the agency only learned of the resolution “via an email late Wednesday night.”

“While our goal with all permit applications is to ensure the safety and mobility of the traveling public, we are sensitive to the community’s concerns and will work with all parties to develop the best solution,” she said.

In a statement Friday evening, DAMAC spokesperson Niall McLouglin said the firm’s consultants had “relayed to us the details of FDOT’s normal policy” ahead of the meeting with FDOT. It wasn’t immediately clear which policy he was referring to.

The meeting with FDOT focused largely on the location of curb cuts, McLoughlin said, as well as “the need for sight lines” and to “optimize the correct landscaping” at the intersection of Collins and 88th Street.

“Subsequently, our consultants have reaffirmed the normal policy, and that is how we’ve proceeded in conjunction with the town,” McLoughlin said.

Board members lean on supposed FDOT direction

The state’s version of its conversations with DAMAC did not seem clear to Surfside Planning and Zoning Board members ahead of their vote Thursday, a non-binding but crucial step before the project heads to the Town Commission for approval later this month.

Multiple board members cited FDOT’s requirements, as represented by the developer, to conclude there would be no viable way to address concerns about the garbage and loading dock placement.

“It sounds as if there was a communication or a meeting with FDOT on what they could or could not do,” board chair Carolyn Baumel said. Regarding loading access from Collins, she added, “FDOT already said, ‘No, you cannot.’ ”

“My take on this is that whatever Surfside says regarding the location regulations doesn’t supersede FDOT,” board member Ruben Bravo said. “Whatever they say is what you have to do.”

The meeting was a quasi-judicial hearing, meaning speakers were testifying under oath.

Some family members of the 98 people who died in the June 2021 collapse — along with one board member, Lindsay Lecour — said the DAMAC proposal fails to honor last year’s resolution by the Town Commission calling for a permanent memorial to occupy the entire street-end directly north of the property.

“I’m outraged to see that the proposed plan for the new building is taking so much of 88th Street,” said David Rodan, whose 28-year-old brother Moises and three cousins died in the collapse. “I’m here to ask you, please don’t let that happen.”

READ MORE: Remembering the victims of the Surfside tower collapse

The resolution called for the closure of 88th Street to vehicular traffic east of Collins Avenue, while still allowing access for emergency vehicles and “any access required to reach property north and south of the street-end.”

Opponents of the DAMAC proposal said it would sully an area meant to commemorate the tragedy, bringing sanitation trucks and moving vans to a loading dock around the midway point of the street-end, according to site plan documents.

The dock would open 20 feet wide along the southern edge of 88th Street and extend 38 feet into the property at 8777 Collins Ave., the plans show.

In a statement Friday after this story was published online, McLoughlin, the DAMAC spokesperson, said town officials told the firm’s representatives after Thursday’s meeting that the town plans to collect garbage “just east” of the 88th and Collins intersection in the future, rather than sending trucks farther down the street to a loading dock on private property.

“Accordingly, we’re working to remove the garbage area from the loading dock area and develop a system to deliver it from within our site to the designated location without running along 88th Street,” McLoughlin said.

Town Manager Hector Gomez told the Herald on Friday that the town has moved away from sending sanitation trucks onto private property since the Champlain collapse, responding to some buildings’ concerns about the possible structural impacts of bringing heavy trucks into underground garages.

Instead, Gomez said, the trucks turn “just enough to tuck away from Collins Ave.” DAMAC representatives weren’t aware of that new practice until Gomez informed them yesterday, he said.

Judith Frankel, the town planner, said Thursday that town and state officials “prefer” to have loading and trash pickup occur away from Collins Avenue “for traffic flow and safety,” although other nearby buildings with no adjacent side streets do use Collins for those purposes.

‘An act of malice’

Pablo Langesfeld, who lost his 26-year-old daughter Nicole in the collapse, called the proposal “an act of malice and disrespect to all of us.”

“This is about doing the right thing,” Langesfeld said. “Eighty-eighth Street must be a memorial.”

Town officials and representatives for DAMAC said the side street would still be closed to regular traffic and utilized for a memorial under the current plan. The town has issued a request for proposals to design it.

In a letter to current town officials earlier this week, three former elected officials and one current commissioner who voted last year to designate 88th Street as a memorial said they had agreed at the time that it was “utterly inappropriate” to put garbage facilities there. They urged current decision-makers to “respect and honor” their resolution and ensure that access is only for pedestrians and emergency vehicles.

Lecour, the dissenting Planning and Zoning Board member, asked her colleagues to defer a vote so that the developers could explore potential alternatives.

“I know it’s possible to find a solution on this site that they can sign off on,” she said.

When another board member noted that a deferral would cost the developer time, Lecour responded that the board’s approval of DAMAC’s plan was “costing our town the integrity of this memorial.”

The project will ultimately need a green light from the town’s building official, James McGuinness. On Thursday, McGuinness said the project as currently proposed would be hampered by the fact that its southwest corner sits in a FEMA flood zone, meaning it can’t legally include underground parking. DAMAC’s proposal features two underground parking levels with 148 spaces.

McGuinness said a new proposed FEMA map would remove that complication by placing the entire property outside the flood zone, but the change has yet to be implemented. DAMAC has submitted a letter to FEMA asking the agency to amend its current map.

Will memorial extend onto Champlain site?

DAMAC, led by billionaire developer Hussain Sajwani, is proposing to construct two adjacent 12-story buildings at the site, rising to the town’s maximum allowed height of 120 feet. The project, designed by London’s Zaha Hadid Architects, would feature 52 condos averaging about 7,000 square feet apiece.

The Dubai firm was the lone bidder for the property in a court auction last summer, paying $120 million to buy it as Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Michael Hanzman sought to squeeze maximum value out of the land to benefit victims and their families.

Some family members have continued to plead for at least part of a memorial to extend into the property, saying it’s important to acknowledge that their loved ones perished there.

“It’s going to always be on top of a graveyard tainted with blood,” Pablo Langesfeld said of the development.

DAMAC has entertained the notion of putting a memorial partially on its property but hasn’t made any commitments. A pair of proposals supported by Mayor Shlomo Danzinger to grant concessions to the developer in exchange for possible memorial space have been shot down by the commission amid heated political fights.

Meanwhile, some family members have said communication with the town has been lacking since the formation of a committee created last year to discuss the memorial.

Last October, Danzinger quietly traveled to Dubai to meet with Sajwani, a trip first reported by the Herald that upset some committee members who said they were unaware of it. Danzinger said he was there to advocate for a memorial on the site and that Sajwani seemed open to the idea, praising him as “a family man who seems to care about the community he builds in.”

Four Seasons photos ignite political feuds

Drama surrounding the project has continued in the months since.

On Wednesday, former Surfside Mayor Charles Burkett circulated an email featuring photos of current elected officials, including Danzinger, sitting over drinks with members of the Planning and Zoning Board at the local Four Seasons hotel after a recent Town Commission meeting.

Burkett suggested the officials had run afoul of state laws requiring government meetings to be held in public, though it wasn’t clear what the group had discussed during the hotel gathering.

Board member David Forbes blasted Burkett at Thursday’s meeting, saying the former mayor “lied” in an effort to “frighten everyone up here.” Forbes denied that any town business had been discussed, saying the officials did “what friends do” and chatted about their personal lives.

“After every meeting, we shake hands, we hug, we have a drink ... because we have become friends,” Forbes said. “At no time was city, county or state business talked about.”

A federal investigation into what caused the partial collapse of Champlain Towers South is ongoing. In June, the National Institute of Standards and Technology issued a preliminary summary that identified weaknesses in the L-shaped building’s pool deck as the likely origin of the collapse, echoing Miami Herald reporting.

This story has been updated to include statements from DAMAC and the Florida Department of Transportation and comments from the Surfside town manager.