Plans for a new condominium building at the same site in Surfside, Florida, where 98 people were killed when Champlain Towers South condo collapsed in 2021, were submitted for approval this week.
DAMAC International, a Dubai-based developer, announced Tuesday it submitted an application for planning approval for a new 12-story “ultra-luxury boutique oceanfront condominium” with 57 residences at the site.
The Surfside town planner confirmed to USA TODAY on Wednesday the city received the application, which has to be reviewed by the Surfside Planning and Zoning Board, then would go to the town’s commission for approval. Only after approval would the developer be able to submit a building permit for construction on the site.
“While no work of architecture can ever remove the pain of the past, nor should it, a truly ambitious work of architecture can respect such a significant site,” Chris Lepine, director of architecture and design firm Zaha Hadid Architects, said in a press release.
Plans come nearly 2 years after collapse
The nation was rocked when the 12-story, 135-unit Champlain Towers South partially collapsed in the early morning of June 24, 2021. Investigators said the building had been unstable and in need of structural repair. At the time of the collapse, the property was in the midst of an inspection.
Rescuers traveled from across the country and internationally in the aftermath, though only two teenagers and a woman survived the collapse, while others escaped from the portion of the building that initially remained standing. It took more than a month for searchers to account for all the victims.
The cause of the collapse hasn’t been pinpointed nearly two years later, and federal investigators are still combing through remnants of the structure in a probe they have called “one of the most complex and challenging of its type ever undertaken, with no obvious initiating event for the collapse.”
The National Institute of Standards and Technology estimated its investigation will finish next spring, and a report with recommendations will follow a year later.
Some family members wanted a memorial, not a new building
In the wake of the collapse and the announcement that the property would be sold off to raise funds for condo owners in the building, some of the family members of the victims said they wanted to see the site used for a memorial.
“We do not build over dead people,” Vicky Btesh, a newlywed whose 26-year-old husband, Andres Levine, was killed in the collapse, said at the time.
Families were awarded a nearly $1 billion settlement in a swift action by a judge.
Despite calls for a memorial on the site, the developer purchased the property for $120 million a little less than a year ago, public property records show.
“I think we’d have all liked to see a memorial there and it turned into some kind of park, but that ship sailed a long time ago,” Surfside Mayor Shlomo Danzinger told ABC News. Danzinger told the outlet part of a nearby street is expected to be eventually turned into a memorial park.
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