Ten unit owners at the Palm Bay Towers
are suing their condominium association and property manager
KW Property Management & Consulting in Miami-Dade Circuit
Court, alleging that both have willfully ignored major
repairs to the building and the property’s condemned marina.
“Allowing the marina to be condemned has pushed our property
values down to half of what they were,” Thomas Marrazza, one
of the plaintiffs who owns a 19th floor unit, told The Real
Deal. “My condo previously had a market value of $1.6
million. Now it’s worth roughly $800,000. Meanwhile, our
maintenance fees have more than doubled from around $1,000 a
month to about $3,300 without any noticeable improvement in
the maintenance and our quality of life.”
According to the lawsuit, the current
condo board has made it its mission to run down the 26-story
Palm Bay Towers at 720 Northeast 69th Street, by failing to
make repairs to the building’s common areas and exteriors,
such as fixing water intrusion in the lobby, cracking stucco
and concrete on the balcony edges, and replacing missing
ceiling tiles and corroded and deteriorating metal doors.
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Palm Bay Towers
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The five-member board
includes The Vagabond Group co-founder Daliah Lagoa, who
along with partner and developer Avra Jain own and live in a
unit in the Palm Bay Towers.
Geralyn Passaro, the attorney for the Palm Bay Towers
Condominium Association, said the board members declined
comment. Frank Simone, KW general counsel and partner, also
declined comment.
Allowing the marina to be condemned by the city of Miami in
February 2019 has been the most egregious act of neglect by
the board, according to Marrazza and two other plaintiffs
who spoke to TRD. An unsafe structures notice posted by the
city states that the concrete dock is showing “advance signs
of structural stress, cracks and caving in.”
The lawsuit alleges the condo association was forced to
close the marina, and boat owners who rented slips had to
remove their vessels. For more than a year-and-a-half, Palm
Bay Towers has lost revenue from not having an operational
marina, and unit owners have been deprived of its use, the
complaint states. In addition, unit owners’ monthly
maintenance fees increased to make up for the lost revenue.
“We have been damaged with the loss of property value and
lost income from the marina,” Marrazza said. “All of this
has increased expenditures and decreased our property
values. We need to stop the path we are going on.”
Carlos Lopez-Albear, a plaintiff who owns a two-story
penthouse at Palm Bay Towers, said the board has shown a
pattern of mismanagement and breach of its fiduciary duty.
“The board has been overspending and mismanaging funds on
projects that should not have taken priority over our
marina,” Lopez-Albear said. “We’ve lost about $300,000 in
annual revenue. Palm Bay Towers is the poster child for the
abuses that run rampant in Florida condo associations.”