Most of Surfside condo board quit in 2019 amid sluggish response to repair plans: WaPo

Five people resigned in 2019 from the condo board of the Florida building that collapsed early Thursday, The Washington Post reported.

Board president Anette Goldstein was among those that resigned from the seven-member board, partly due to the slow response to major structural concerns that had been detailed in an engineer consultant’s report in 2018, the Post reported.

The Post obtained previously unpublished correspondences, board minutes from the condo, and other records from the homeowner’s association. The news outlet noted that several roadblocks that impeded the building’s ability to quickly address the structural issues included a high turnover on the condo board and debate among board members about the scope and costs of the work needed to be done.

“We work for months to go in one direction and at the very last minute objections are raised that should have been discussed and resolved right in the beginning,” Goldstein said in her resignation letter in September 2019, according to The Post.

“This pattern has repeated itself over and over, ego battles, undermining the roles of fellow board members, circulation of gossip and mistruths. I am not presenting a very pretty picture of the functioning of our board and many before us, but it describes a board that works very hard but cannot for the reasons above accomplish the goals we set out to accomplish,” she continued.

Four other members on the condo board resigned in 2018. The Post could not determine from the documents why the other four members had resigned. Several members, including Goldstein, later rejoined the board, according to The Post.

Early Thursday morning, the Champlain Towers South condominium building in the Miami suburb of Surfside, Fla., partially collapsed. At least least 18 people have now been confirmed dead and 147 people remain unaccounted for as of Wednesday evening.

It remains unclear what exactly caused the partial collapse.

In 2018, a report by an engineer consultant, Frank Morabito, who inspected the condominium, had warned in his report that there was “major structural damage.” Miami-Dade County code requires that buildings that are 40 years old go through a process to be recertified. 

Morabito noted that the ground-floor parking garage’s “concrete columns, beams, and walls” had “abundant cracking and spalling of varying degrees.”

Additionally, Morabito cited issues of concrete tumbling and cracks in the columns that exposed the garage deck’s steel reinforcements.