Dozens of luxury condos, hotels in Miami sinking at ‘unexpected’ rates, new study reveals
Dozens of luxury beachfront condos and hotels in Surfside, Bal Harbour, Miami Beach and Sunny Isles are sinking into the ground at rates that were “unexpected,” with nearly 70 percent of the buildings in northern and central Sunny Isles affected, research by the University of Miami found.
The study, published Friday night, identified a total of 35 buildings that have sunk by as much as three inches between 2016 and 2023, including the iconic Surf Club Towers and Faena Hotel, the Porsche Design Tower, The Ritz-Carlton Residences, Trump Tower III and Trump International Beach Resorts. Together, the high rises accommodate tens of thousands of residents and tourists. Some have more than 300 units, including penthouses that cost millions of dollars.
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“Sometimes it can be dangerous, sometimes not – it will have to be evaluated,” said Shimon Wdowinski, a geophysicist at Florida International University, told the Herald. Wdowinski worked on a different 2020 study that showed that the land surrounding the Champlain Towers – not the buildings themselves – had been subsiding back in the nineties, though that alone couldn’t have led to the collapse. The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has yet to release a final report on the cause but a Herald investigation pointed to design and construction flaws as well as decades of maintenance issues.
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Experts also pointed to the impact the emission of fossil fuels and the resulting warming of the climate is having on the overall stability of Miami-Dade’s barrier islands.
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