Latest news with #TowersSouth
CBS News
15-04-2025
- Business
- CBS News
Bills advance in Florida Legislature to ease financial burden on condo owners
Bills to help condo owners manage high costs from safety inspections and structural integrity reserve studies, required for condominium associations after the deadly 2021 Champlain Towers South collapse in Surfside, are progressing through the Florida Legislature. After the collapse killed 98 people, lawmakers passed laws in 2022 and refined them in 2023 to ensure condo safety. However, these laws led to higher costs for residents. On Tuesday, Florida House and Senate committees approved plans to revamp laws dealing with condo associations. The new bills — HB 913 and SB 1742 — aim to revamp laws governing condo associations. Sponsored by Rep. Vicki Lopez (R-Miami) in the House and Sen. Jennifer Bradley (R-Fleming Island) in the Senate, the bills propose allowing condo-association boards to obtain lines of credit. The change is intended to help residents manage the financial difficulties associated with necessary repairs and reserve building. Currently, the House bill is set to be reviewed by the full House, while the Senate version must still pass through the Rules Committee before reaching the full Senate. These legislative efforts aim to offer financial relief to condominium owners while maintaining the safety and integrity of their homes.
Chicago Tribune
29-01-2025
- Business
- Chicago Tribune
A South Florida luxury condo project is planned for site where building collapse killed 98 people
SURFSIDE, Fla. — A Dubai-based developer plans to build a 12-story luxury condominium project on the South Florida site where a building collapsed in 2021, killing 98 people. DAMAC International said Tuesday that it planned to build The Delmore on the site where the Champlain Towers South partially collapsed in Surfside, Florida, outside Miami in June 2021. Construction has already started and the project is expected to be finished in 2029, the company said in a news release. The building with staggered floors designed by Zaha Hadid Architects will have 37 'mansions' with units averaging 7,000 square feet. The price of a four-or-five-bedroom unit will start at $15 million, and the project will include a private restaurant, residential butlers, a wellness spa and other resort-style amenities, according to the company. 'We have been focused on delivering an ultra-luxury product to the South Florida market that is unlike anything the area has seen previously,' Jeffery Rossely, senior vice president of development for DAMAC International, said in the statement. The news release makes no mention of the tragedy. What happened In June 2021, the 12-story, 136-unit oceanfront condo building came down with a thunderous roar, leaving a giant pile of rubble and claiming 98 lives — one of the deadliest structure collapses in U.S. history. Only two teenagers and a woman survived the collapse, while others escaped from the portion of the building that initially stood. A judge in 2023 approved a settlement topping $1 billion for victims of the Champlain Towers South collapse. The money comes from 37 different sources, including insurance companies, engineering firms and a luxury condominium whose recent construction next door is suspected of contributing to structural damage. None of the parties admitted any wrongdoing. The cause of the collapse remains under investigation by the National Institute of Standards and Technology. The investigation National Institute of Standards and Technology investigators told an advisory panel that tests show that some of the steel-reinforced concrete columns at Champlain Towers South were half the strength they should have been and were not up to construction standards in 1980 when the 12-story tower was built. The steel in some columns had become moderately to extremely corroded, weakening them further. Investigators have also confirmed eyewitness reports that the pool deck fell into the garage four to seven minutes before the beachside tower collapsed. Champlain Towers South had a long history of maintenance problems, and shoddy construction techniques were used in the early 1980s. Other possible factors include sea level rise caused by climate change and damage caused by saltwater intrusion. Legislation After the collapse, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed into law new regulations requiring condo associations for buildings with three or more stories to file an inspection report focused on structure, maintenance and expected costs for repairs or renovations. The regulations require associations to have sufficient reserves to cover major repairs and to survey reserves every decade. Because of the law, older condos — found largely in South Florida, according to state records — face hefty increases to association payments to fund the reserves and repair costs.
Miami Herald
27-01-2025
- Politics
- Miami Herald
Florida condo costs officially dropped from special session amid Republican showdown
The state Legislature continues to defy Ron DeSantis' call to amend a new condominium-safety law that is putting financial pressure on condo owners and homeowners associations, prompting one Republican ally to the governor to predict elderly owners on fixed incomes will become the 'next wave of homeless people' in Florida. During an unprecedented speech Monday, House Speaker Daniel Perez, a Miami Republican, said legislation like the condominium law in question — passed in response to the deadly 2021 collapse of the Champlain Towers South in Surfside — was too complicated to take up during a special session, even though that is how the original law was passed in 2022. The law, which took effect at the end of last year, requires condominium associations to fully fund their building maintenance reserves — a rule that some condo owners and associations have blamed for escalating maintenance fees and hefty special assessments. It is a departure from the previous law that allowed associations to vote to waive funding reserves, causing repairs in some older buildings to build up over decades, ballooning costs that may now be unaffordable. 'The tragedy of the collapse in Surfside is a painful reminder of what happens when we don't get the law right,' said Perez, who sponsored the post-Surfside condo legislation in the Florida House. He added: 'And the truth is I dislike special sessions because they inhibit the very thing the legislative process should encourage: the push and pull of meaningful conversations that lead to the development of good and better ideas.' Perez and Senate President Ben Albritton, a Wauchula Republican, quickly had their chambers gavel in and out of 'Special Session A,' which they constitutionally had to call to respond to Gov. Ron DeSantis' proclamation on Jan. 13 for the Legislature to convene this week. DeSantis initially said he wanted the Legislature to work urgently on a wide range of issues, including condominium relief, though he quietly pared back his ambitions and limited his proposals to immigration and citizen-led ballot initiatives after the leaders balked. Perez and Albritton then had members immediately gavel in for 'Special Session B,' which the leaders publicly called themselves Monday to focus solely on immigration, with which the new Trump administration has urged states to assist. Perez said Florida had to 'quickly align with President Trump's directives.' Rep. Mike Caruso, a Republican DeSantis ally from Delray Beach who filed 10 bills mostly centered on immigration for the governor's special session, said elderly residents in condominiums will be soon foreclosed on because they 'could no longer afford the triple reserves or the quadrupled dues' caused by legislation that went into effect at the end of last year requiring full funding of maintenance reserves for buildings. 'It's sad, and we're not going to address it here in the Florida House,' said Caruso, noting that his district includes tens of thousands of condominium units. 'I'm shocked by it.' Ronni Drimmer, the condominium board president of a 55-and-older association in Clearwater with 70 units, sat at a roundtable with DeSantis in September regarding the financial stress she and others were under. She expected the Legislature to change the law after that event through a special session. Her association just passed its required structural inspection known as the 'milestone' with no substantial problems reported, according to a document she shared with the Herald/Times. But she said she just had to pay $7,200 for her part of a new roof required by insurance. The cost of insurance also went up by $25,000 over the association's 2025 budget. And now, thanks to the newly enacted law, the association's HOA fees are projected to go up by $100 a month on average for 2025 for building maintenance, a different report she shared called structural integrity reserve study showed. Drimmer said she and other unit owners won't be able to afford the monthly increase. 'Feels like a freight train has run over me,' Drimmer, 72, said. 'I have no idea what will happen.' Sen. Randy Fine, a Republican from Melbourne who sat in on his chamber's Jan. 14 condominium discussion on the status of the law, in part because his father lives in a condo, also said a special session wasn't appropriate to address issues with the law. 'A special session that's five days long, everything has to be pre-packaged so you can push it through,' said Fine, who has publicly feuded with DeSantis. 'And so, to do a special session for five days on four topics with no bill, the whole thing was always a stunt.' Sen. Carlos Guillermo Smith, a Democrat from Orlando, agreed with Fine and Perez that special session wasn't the right place to address the condominium crisis. He said the current law, SB 4D, was jammed through during a special session nearly three years ago after the Legislature couldn't find consensus during the regular one. 'If you rush through half-baked policies in a special session, there's going to be unintended consequences,' Guillermo Smith said.
