{"id":9743,"date":"2022-05-25T14:03:00","date_gmt":"2022-05-25T21:03:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/essential.construction\/news\/?p=9743"},"modified":"2022-05-25T14:03:00","modified_gmt":"2022-05-25T21:03:00","slug":"surfside-florida-condo-site-sells-for-120m","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/essential.construction\/news\/surfside-florida-condo-site-sells-for-120m\/","title":{"rendered":"Surfside, Florida, condo site sells for $120M"},"content":{"rendered":"

DAMAC Properties, a Dubai-based luxury real estate developer, has agreed to pay $120 million for the site where 98 people died in June when the Champlain Towers South residential tower collapsed in Surfside, Florida.
\nOwned by billionaire Hussain Sajwani, who is known as the \u201cDonald Trump of the Middle East,\u201d DAMAC set the $120 million minimum bid for the nearly 2-acre beachfront property last year. When no competing bids were submitted by last Friday\u2019s deadline, an auction scheduled for May 24 was canceled.
\nDAMAC told The Real Deal<\/em><\/a> it plans to build a luxury residential tower, likely a for-sale condo project, on the site.<\/p>\n

While DAMAC will face some touchy issues with survivors\u2019 families and cleanup of the site, construction and engineering experts say the problems that caused Champlain Tower South to collapse were in the design and maintenance of the building.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The site itself is buildable and safe, experts say.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cFrom a technical standpoint, there are no big obstacles,\u201d says Roberto T. Leon, a structural engineering and materials professor at Virginia Tech. \u201cThere are probably some foundations there that they will leave in place or build around. They may re-utilize them to some degree, but I think they\u2019re probably just going to start from scratch.\u201d<\/p>\n

Though geotechnical engineering reports on the site haven\u2019t been released, attorney Carol Sigmond, a partner in the construction and litigation practice groups at New York City-based Greenspoon Marder LLP, said no developer would pay $120 million to buy a property without having the soil probed to make sure it\u2019s stable.<\/p>\n

\u201c[Sajwani] has to know what he\u2019s facing,\u201d she said. \u201cHe\u2019d never spend that kind of money without having that type of basic information. He has to believe he can get a foundation in.\u201d<\/p>\n

But attorney Tyler Berding, a founding partner of Berding & Weil LLP, who has litigated numerous building product and construction failures in Florida and elsewhere is not convinced the site is stable.\u00a0A National Institute of Standards and Technology investigation into the exact cause of the collapse is ongoing, but an academic study found<\/a> the building had been sinking 2 millimeters per year since the 1990s as the ground below it, once a marshland, settles.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe land itself has some serious issues,\u201d Berding said. \u201cThis isn\u2019t just that lot, but that whole coast of Florida that\u2019s being invaded by seawater. Certainly, the city of Surfside and, I would hope, the state of Florida would want some serious engineering done on that site before they allowed them to build another high rise there \u2014 just simply because what they\u2019re building on is not very stable ground. It\u2019s sand being invaded by seawater.\u201d<\/p>\n

Peter Dyga, president and CEO of the Florida East Coast chapter of Associated Builders and Contractors, said the only potential issue he sees is that toxic materials and liquids from the collapsed building may have leached into the ground.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cYou just want to make sure the ground itself doesn\u2019t come with any liability from a cleanup perspective,\u201d he told Multifamily Dive.<\/p>\n

That includes human remains, Sigmond said, which could cause some pushback from victims\u2019 families.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThe only thing we really have to compare this to is the World Trade Center,\u201d Sigmond said, and that site was challenging because workers kept coming across body parts as it was redeveloped.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s going to have some pushback from families of the dead,\u201d Sigmond said. \u201cIf he\u2019s smart, he\u2019ll have a protocol with the city to have the coroner come any time they find remains. The coroner will come to recover the remains in a respectful way and identify who they are. \u2026 And if he\u2019s smart, he\u2019s going to put some kind of memorial on the site.\u201d<\/p>\n

Whatever gets built, Dyga said, \u201cmust be done respectfully so we never forget.\u201d He suggested waiting to build \u201cuntil the wounds are perhaps a little less raw.\u201d<\/p>\n

Some of the victims\u2019 family members have pushed for a memorial rather than new construction on the site, but the land sale is contributing $33 million to an $83 million settlement<\/a> for unit owners and their heirs who lost their property in the collapse.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In addition, victims\u2019 families reached a $997 million settlement<\/a> earlier this month with insurance companies and developers of an adjacent building, where victims and survivors allege vibrations from excavation and construction contributed to Champlain Towers South\u2019s collapse<\/a>.<\/p>\n

DAMAC should be aware of those allegations so it doesn\u2019t face similar criticism when it begins construction on its own building, Leon said. \u201cI think the neighbors are going to be paying a lot of attention.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

In September 2021, an appraiser valued all the condos in Champlain Towers South, if they had sold on the day before the crash, at $95 million, Newsweek reported<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The offering memorandum for the property shared with Multifamily Dive says its \u201cpermissive\u201d zoning allows for a potential 12-story, 120-foot-high residential or hotel tower with 200 feet of direct beach frontage.<\/p>\n

\u201cWith South Florida\u2019s Atlantic coastline virtually fully developed, opportunities to acquire developable sites of scale are extremely rare and in high demand,\u201d the memo states.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt appears he really wanted the property,\u201d Sigmond\u00a0said, pointing out that \u201canything in Florida is hot right now.\u201d <\/p>\n

This item was originally posted here: Read More<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

DAMAC Properties, a Dubai-based luxury real estate developer, has agreed to pay $120 million for the site where 98 people … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":9744,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1066,457],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9743","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-all-posts","category-construction-dive","generate-columns","tablet-grid-50","mobile-grid-100","grid-parent","grid-33"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/essential.construction\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9743","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/essential.construction\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/essential.construction\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essential.construction\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9743"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/essential.construction\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9743\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essential.construction\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9744"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/essential.construction\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9743"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essential.construction\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9743"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essential.construction\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9743"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}