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.
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A rendering shows a proposed ultra-luxury condo project at the site of the Champlain Towers South building collapse in Surfside. |
“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.
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An aerial view on June 3, 2022, shows the site where the Champlain Towers South building partially collapsed on June 24, 2021, killing 98 people. |
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.”
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.