Condo accused Surfside of ‘holding up’ major repairs three days before collapse, emails show
The association of owners of the Champlain Towers South Condominium knew their building needed repairs — a lot of them and soon — and by May they were trying in earnest to get town approval for their major renovation plans, according to emails between the association and town officials obtained by the Miami Herald.
The town building department wasn’t always responsive.
Emails show building department officials were silent for more than a month after the condo association submitted plans in May to the town asking for approval of a temporary parking plan in order to move forward. The delay prompted Scott Stewart, the condo building manager, to accuse the town of “holding us up” as the association sought to accelerate the tower’s overhaul, which included repairs to a concrete slab under the pool deck and planters that experts are now pointing to as an initial point of failure that preceded the building collapse.
On June 23, the director of the Surfside building department, James McGuinness, finally responded with a list of logistics questions. It was just 14 hours before the tower collapsed. No one had a chance to reply.
Emails show McGuinness had visited the building in May to document ongoing repairs to the roof.
After this story was published, Town Manager Andrew Hyatt sent the Herald a statement saying the plans submitted by the condo association in May were marked “preliminary” and much of it seemed to be “outside the scope of any proposed 40-year re-certification work.”
“There was no indication during any communications between the Town and the association by telephone or electronic mail that this submission required emergency action by the Town of Surfside,” Hyatt said in the statement “The scope of work for repairs was not received until June 21, 2021, and not in the form of a building application. To date, no permit application for these specific repairs has been received by the Town.”
Representatives for the condo association did not immediately respond to the Herald’s request for comment.
In 2018, Champlain Towers contracted engineer Frank Morabito to conduct a survey of the building in preparation for a 40-year safety recertification that would come due in 2021. Morabito prescribed millions of dollars in necessary repairs, the most significant of which were to correct a “major error” to the building’s pool deck, and fix the damage it had caused to the structural slab below.
The damage was significantly worse by April 2021, according to a letter to condo owners from Jean Wodnicki, the condo board president, first reported by USA Today. Repairs needed to be made urgently, she wrote.
“The concrete damage observed would begin to multiply exponentially over the years, and indeed the observable damage such as in the garage has gotten significantly worse since the initial inspection,” Wodnicki wrote.
Since the collapse, reporting has shed light on internal dysfunction at the condo that may have dragged out the process unnecessarily. “We have discussed, debated and argued for years now,” Wodnicki wrote in that same letter.
Morabito and members of the condo board finally met with Surfside building officials on May 13 to discuss the extensive renovation plans after more than a week of sending unanswered emails trying to set up a time, records show.
Morabito followed up in a May 20 email. The biggest hang-up for getting the project out to bid was having sufficient space for the construction crews and equipment, he wrote. In his email to the town planner, Walter Keller, Morabito requested the town approve plans to make the necessary space so the condo association could move forward with bidding the $16 million repair project.
“It is [Champlain Tower South’s] desire to go out to bid for our 40-year recertification work ASAP and need the Town of Surfside input on this request so everyone has a clear understanding on how this project will be accomplished. As such, we respectfully request that we hear from the Town in the near future so we can make any necessary revisions to our contract drawings and submit same to the Town for permit review/approval,” Morabito wrote.
A month and a day later, no one from the town had responded to the email, so Stewart, the building manager, followed up.
“As we are out to bid on our project [we] need to get to answers to these questions,” Stewart wrote to the town building official on June 21. “This is holding us up and cost [sic] are going up and out [sic] 40 year is coming up fast.”
In a separate email to the town that day, Stewart laid out $11 million in urgent repairs. Items one and two: Remove all pool deck tile on “existing concrete surface” and “repair damaged concrete.”
McGuinness, the point person from the town on the project, responded to the questions about temporary parking on June 23. He said he needed more information, including a site plan for the temporary lot, drawn to scale, details about fencing, and a description of how Champlain Towers would “prevent the site from becoming a dust bowl or a mud bowl.”
A spokesperson for Morabito did not immediately respond to the Herald’s request for comment.
“Morabito Consultants was retained in 2018 by the Champlain Towers South Condominium Association to prepare the 40-year Recertification of the condo building, as required by Miami-Dade County and the Town of Surfside,” according to a June 26 statement from Morabito Consultants, two days after the collapse.
“We completed our inspection and provided our report to the condominium association on Oct. 8, 2018, detailing our findings and recommendations. At that time, we also provided the condominium association with an estimate of the probable costs to make the extensive and necessary repairs.”
Email records show the condo association asking questions about the 40-year assessment process for more than a year well before it came due.
“We have been trying to move forward with getting the needed documents completed for our 40 year so we can hit the ground running when we are able to start work,” Stewart wrote to then-building director Ross Prieto in April 2020.
The previous year Prieto had told Champlain Towers residents their building was in “good shape,” after reviewing the 2018 inspection that pointed out “major errors” and severe damage.
This article has been updated with a statement from the town of Surfside.
This story was originally published July 2, 2021 at 6:04 PM.
