Building owned by Surfside mayor has needed fixes for years. He blames permit delays.

While Surfside Mayor Charles Burkett manages building-safety issues in the town where the Champlain Towers South condo collapsed, an apartment building Burkett owns in neighboring Miami Beach has a lingering problem of its own.

It’s been nearly four years since Miami Beach’s Building Department issued an “Unsafe Structures” violation for the Lois Apartments at 2001 Bay Dr. in Normandy Isle after a tree fell and damaged four of its balconies during Hurricane Irma in 2017.

The balconies were never fixed and have been boarded up. From the outside, exposed rebar is visible in one balcony’s railings, which are tied together with rope. In the balcony one floor up, more than half of the railing is gone.

Burkett, whose real estate business Burkett Companies has owned the building since 1990, said delays with the city’s permitting process — and challenges hiring and retaining contractors after the hurricane and later during COVID — have stalled the planned demolition and replacement of the balconies.

“We’ve done everything we can legally do without the permit,” he said. “We can’t physically go up there and start working on the building without permission. The important thing to note is that we’ve applied and we’ve gone through the process and we’ve done it expeditiously.”

That’s not what the city says. Miami Beach spokeswoman Melissa Berthier told the Miami Herald that the balconies cannot be replaced until Burkett submits documents for a permit revision he applied for in April.

‘This is not a safe condition’

Last week, after neighboring residents complained about the situation on social media, the city issued a “Final Notice” at the building and ordered that safety netting be placed beneath the balconies to catch any falling debris. On Friday, workers set up plywood walls underneath the balconies to block access.

In an Aug. 19 email to Burkett’s contractor, Miami Beach Building Official Ana Salguero said “this is not a safe condition.”

The condition of the balconies isn’t the only issue with the 16-unit building. The elevator hasn’t been operational in over a year, there’s some concrete damage in the garage and when it rains, it floods downstairs, said Ramiro Picos, 31, who lives on the fourth floor. The water also comes in through a leak in the ceiling of his son’s bedroom, he said.

“It’s unfortunate that we have to live like this,” he said. “We’re expendable, basically. They don’t care.”

Picos said he has met Burkett before, but didn’t realize he was the mayor of Surfside until he saw him on the news after the partial collapse of Champlain Towers South.

“I was enraged,” he said. “I was really mad.”

Who is holding up repairs?

Burkett said he shares residents’ frustrations and has a standing offer to let anyone out of their lease if they want to leave. The building, which was constructed in 1982, is not yet required to complete its 40-year recertification but Burkett said he has hired an engineer to begin the process. In July, he applied for a permit to do “minor concrete repairs,” according to city records.

“We’re not happy that it’s taken this long to get through the process,” he said. “I will be as happy as anybody to begin to do the work, but again, doing work without permits is not possible.”

Burkett blames delays in repairing the balconies on the “bureaucratic mess” in Miami Beach’s Building Department. He said he has worked diligently to hire contractors and engineers, purchase materials and submit plans to fix the hurricane damage at his property.

He also blames the city for rejecting his written request to trim the tree months before Hurricane Irma uprooted it.

But the Building Department says it’s waiting for Burkett to submit needed documents for permitting. In 2019, the city expressed dissatisfaction with the pace of work on the repairs. Berthier, the city spokeswoman, said after “no action was being taken by the property to make needed repairs,” the Building Department referred the issue in 2019 to the Special Master, who has demanded regular progress reports.

Burkett said the assertion that he had taken no action is wrong. He applied for a master permit in 2018 to remove and replace the damaged balconies. His plans called for a change in the design of the balconies, which required appearing before Miami Beach’s Design Review Board.

That process, which Burkett said may not have been necessary if he had kept the same balcony design, “added time” to the process, he said. The balconies are currently four-feet deep, but the plans call for Juliet balconies, or false balconies that stick out about six inches from the balcony door. In a Design Review Board meeting, Burkett pitched the false balconies as a way to eliminate storage for tenants, which he said diminished the appearance of the building.

The Design Review Board approved the plans, and the city later issued the master permit. But two more permits were still needed — one for the new railings and one for the sliding glass doors, Berthier said. Over a year passed before a contractor applied for the new permits.

During that time, Burkett said, his first contractor quit amid the COVID pandemic and he did not hire a new one until September 2020, which required a change-of-contractor application with the city. An engineering firm also was hired to submit a proposal for the railings.

“It’s not that I’ve been neglecting to do the work,” he said.

The contractor applied for the new permits this past April, and the permit for the railing was issued in May. The other permit has yet to be issued. In April, Burkett’s contractor also applied to revise the master permit. The city on Friday said the contractor has yet to submit required applications or plans to proceed with permit review.

Berthier said Burkett is currently permitted to demolish the balconies but “would not be able to install the updated balconies until the revised permit is issued.”

At loggerheads

Emails between Burkett and Salguero, the building official, illustrate the conflict between Burkett and the city, with both sides appearing confused with what the other is saying.

In one email, Burkett said he was “eagerly awaiting the release of the balcony demolition and repair permit by the city to begin the work...”

Salguero responded bluntly: “The revision has had no plans submitted not sure how you are awaiting something from us when no drawing files have been submitted.”

Burkett said in an interview that the city’s permitting process is “Byzantine” and that staff have not been responsive to questions about what steps to take.

“We’ve acted in good faith and the best we’ve got back from the Building Department is you haven’t submitted your plans,” he said. “If they would just tell us what’s missing we would immediately provide that.”

He noted that the city hadn’t inspected the building since 2019, until residents complained and reporters began asking the city about it.

“I think there is now hyper-vigilance for anything building-related, which is good. That’s a good thing,” he said. “I’m glad that the city is engaging because quite frankly we’ve been engaging for three and a half years.”

This story was originally published August 25, 2021 at 12:05 PM.