North Miami Beach condo being evacuated after deemed unsafe | Miami Herald

The city of North Miami Beach ordered the 10-story Crestview Towers Condominium to be immediately closed and evacuated Friday evening after a building inspection report found it not safe for occupancy due to structural and electrical issues, city officials said Friday night.

The Jan. 11, 2021, inspection report, which the condo association turned in to the city Friday afternoon after the city had threatened to shut down the building on Thursday, said the 156-unit building is :

▪ “Structurally no safe for the specified use for continued occupancy.”

Click to resize

▪ “Electrically no safe for the specified use for continued occupancy.”

The condo tower is the first to be closed due to unsafe structural issues after the partial collapse of Champlain Towers South in Surfside on June 24. As rescue efforts continue, 22 have been found dead and more than 120 are unaccounted for.

The city said the building’s residents are being evacuated in an “abundance of caution.”

By 7 p.m., police were already redirecting traffic around the aging structure, at 2025 NE 164th St., and an incident command truck was parked a block away.

The report, issued by Roberto Barrerio of B&A Engineering Services in Miami, detailed a litany of problems with the 49-year-old building, noting the building’s beams, columns, sills, walls, balcony slabs and other structural elements were “showing distress,” the report said.

“Cracks and spalls found throughout. Moisture at balcony slabs, walls and other structural features,” the report said. “Spalled concrete and rebar corrosion observed.”

Additionally, the report said cracks were observed and “some previous repairs were visible.”

The report also recommended repairs for a fifth-floor electrical room, emergency lights, the fire alarm system, smoke detectors, emergency generator and exit lights.

City Manager Arthur “Duke” Sorey told the Miami Herald that city officials on Thursday threatened Crestview’s condo association that they would shut down the building unless the association produced the building’s most recent inspection report.

Once the association turned over the report Friday afternoon, city officials decided to close and evacuate the building, displacing dozens of residents over the July 4 weekend.

“They were keeping (the report) from us,” Sorey said.

Miami-Dade’s homeless agency said Friday it will house dozens of the residents in a makeshift shelter in a county-owned pavilion on the grounds of the Youth Fair complex off of the Florida Turnpike and Coral Way.

Ron Book, chairman of the Homeless Trust board, said trolleys were preparing to load Crestview Towers residents for the trip south, where they would be provided beds and food in the pet-friendly E. Darwin Fuchs Pavilion at least through Monday.

“The Red Cross is sending cots down there,” Book said Friday night. “Our team will go in there tomorrow and assess.”

Book didn’t have an exact count on residents that would be staying at Fuchs, a cavernous enclosed event space, but said it could be more than 100 people.

Crestview Towers was constructed in 1972 and is subject to the county’s 40-year recertification process, which requires older buildings to be inspected by structural engineers to determine whether they are still safe to live in.

Willis Howard, Sorey’s chief of staff, said the Crestview association appeared to have missed or skipped its 40-year recertification, which would have been due in 2012. The inspections that led to the January report began last August.

“It had been pending for years,” he said, adding the association was fined for every year that it missed filing the report.

“They were seeing how long they could kick the can down the road.”

Representatives of the condo association could not be reached for comment Friday night.

Steven Davis, 37, said he had lived in the building for more than 20 years — and was not surprised by Friday’s evacuation.

“You just knew that something was going to happen,” he said, adding that windows and walls needing fixes throughout the building often went unrepaired. He said he sold his unit eight months ago.

The North Miami Beach Police Department helped with the evacuation. The city has temporarily opened two community centers to offer housing to Crestview residents, Councilman Michael Joseph said. The American Red Cross is also involved to find temporary shelter for displaced residents.

“A lot of people are going to be displaced,” Joseph said.

City officials did not yet have a full count of how many individuals were living in Crestview Towers.

The city launched a review of all condo high-rise buildings after the Surfside collapse.

City officials said Friday night they could not rule out whether other high-rise condos would be closed due to structural issues.

Howard said the decision to evacuate on the Fourth of July weekend was difficult but necessary.

“At this point, it’s about safety.”

Miami Herald Staff Writers Douglas Hanks and Aaron Leibowitz contributed to this report.

This story was originally published July 02, 2021 6:19 PM.