Building safety concerns shut down Miami Beach bath house. Owner pushing to reopen
Vladimir Kamenko says he hasn’t gone to the doctor in over 40 years. The 73-year-old fitness enthusiast said he stays healthy through diet, exercise and weekly cold-shock therapy using a steam room and a frigid cold plunge.
Kamenko, a native of Latvia, has been going to the Russian and Turkish Baths in Miami Beach for 30 years, and he says the cold-water treatment leaves him feeling 20 years younger. His weekly two-hour routine consists of alternating between the steam room and the roughly 45-degree cold plunge — and then repeating.
“When you walk out you feel like you’re floating,” he said.
But since August, the bath house at 5445 Collins Ave. inside the Castle Beach Club Condominiums has been closed due to building safety concerns. An engineering firm hired by the condo association to do the 50-year recertification of the building found concrete damage in the garage below the bath house and installed emergency shoring to support the building.
The engineering firm, Falcon Group, recommended that the bath house stay closed until concrete repairs are done. The city issued the business an unsafe structures violation and an order to vacate the property, a city spokeswoman said.
Bath house owner Dorina Tuberman-Solon said she doesn’t believe her business poses any safety risk and hired an engineer and lawyers to fight the closure. Miami-Dade County’s Unsafe Structures Board is scheduled to hear the issue at a May 18 meeting.
The engineer she hired, Mohammad Hajjar, wrote in a report that the spa could continue operating with the shoring in place while repairs to the damaged concrete move forward. “If you go into the basement there is not one drop of water coming from the bath house,” Tuberman-Solon said.
The city of Miami Beach won’t allow the bath house to reopen until it provides an engineering report assuring the entire building is safe to occupy, the city spokeswoman said.
“The Russian & Turkish Baths were closed following a structural engineering report which identified the pools in the bath to be a hazard to the overall safety of the entire building,” Miami Beach Neighborhood Affairs Manager Kevin Pulido said in an April 13 email to a bath house representative. “The subsequent report submitted only inspected the concrete slab associated with the Russian Baths, but did not opine on the structural integrity of the building.”
Other businesses and common areas in the building — including a pool deck above the garage — have not been closed and the condominiums have not been evacuated.
Tuberman-Solon, who lives in the building with her extended family, said the city’s position doesn’t make sense because it implies the entire building is potentially unsafe.
“If it’s a structural issue, and this was a structural violation given to the building nine months ago, how am I supposed to sleep at night?” she said.
The bath house is a sister spa to the original Russian and Turkish Baths in New York City, which boasts that it has been open since 1892 and counted celebrities such as Frank Sinatra among its patrons. The Miami Beach location has been open for 30 years at the Castle Beach Club.
Making matters more complicated, the 18-story oceanfront building may soon be sold for $500 million. Developers Related Group and 13th Floor Investments made an offer in late March for the 570-unit property, which was built in 1966.
Tuberman-Solon said she feels like she is being targeted by the condo association because she is one of largest property owners in the building and publicly opposes the sale. The condo association did not respond to a request for comment.
She said she owns nine residential units in the building, including four where she and her family live and five that she rents out. Tuberman-Solon said she has been offered about $10 million to sell her units, including the bath house.
“I’m just trying to open the bath house and I have no intention of selling,” she said.
This story was originally published May 10, 2022 at 2:53 PM with the headline "Building safety concerns shut down Miami Beach bath house. Owner pushing to reopen."
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