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(Dylan Bukstel and Eugenia Scheuren)

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The Need to Fill Hearts and Wallets

Surfside families and survivors divided over land use

by

Steven Rosenthal was asleep in his bed when he was woken by a very loud bang.

“I thought it was the loudest thunderclap I heard in my life, times 100,” he recalled.

Thinking it was just a storm, Rosenthal fell back to sleep. Then the bed started shaking and dust fell from the ceiling. That’s when he thought Florida was being hit by a rare earthquake.

“I get out of bed to the sliding glass doors to see the damage across the street, but there is so much dust I can’t see anything. A plume of smoke knocks me back,” Rosenthal said.

With part of the hallway collapsed and escape routes blocked, it would take Rosenthal and some of his neighbors 45 minutes to be rescued via crane. With him was a shopping bag holding a couple of pairs of jeans, a change of underwear, some T-shirts, a pair of shoes, two pairs of sandals, an iPad, an iPhone, and a wallet with some cash and his ID. Everything else Rosenthal owned was lost when the northern portion of Champlain Towers South that remained standing after another section for the building collapsed was imploded due to safety reasons on July 4.

Since then, Rosenthal has been unable to sleep for more than five hours at a time. He wears clothes given to him by friends. With the help of Global Empowerment Mission (GEM), a nonprofit disaster relief organization led by former nightlife and real estate entrepreneur Michael Capponi, he was eventually able to move into an unfinished Brickell apartment.

And although the condominium Rosenthal lived in for the last 20 years no longer exists, he still has a $350,000 mortgage to pay off. Many of his other displaced neighbors – around 40 families and individuals – are also in financial distress, including retirees and households with children.

“The people that lived in Champlain Towers, they weren’t poor. It’s middle class to upper-middle class,” explained Rosenthal, vice president of advertising for IGT Media Holdings, a media placement company based in Miami’s Little River area. “But no one is a Rockefeller.”

While the exact cause, or causes, of the tragedy that killed 98 people remain undetermined, a series of court hearings presided by Circuit Judge Michael Hanzman have been held since July to figure out how to even begin to compensate those who lost family members, homes, property and, in many cases, suffered physical or psychological trauma.

In a Sept. 23 hearing, Hanzman estimated that there could be $1 billion in liabilities from the tragedy. However, absent a responsible and viable third-party that can be taken to court, there will likely be a big gap between funds that are available and claims made, he warned. The most likely pot of money will come from $49.7 million in insurance proceeds and whatever can be obtained from the sale of the 1.88-acre parcel at 8777 Collins Ave. in Surfside, just north of Miami Beach, where Champlain Towers South once stood.

“The need to monetize the real estate is not debatable. It may be the primary resource for recovery for these victims,” Hanzman said at the hearing.

There’s already at least one buyer interested in the land.

Memorial vs. Much-Needed Money

Damac Properties, a Dubai-based real estate development company headed by billionaire Hussain Sajwani, placed the initial bid of $120 million. As of deadline, Sajwani was expected to make a $16 million deposit, with $150,000 being nonrefundable. Examples of Damac’s projects include the 1,099-foot-tall Damac Residenze at Dubai Marina and the 577-foot-tall Damac Tower Nine Elms in London. Damac is also still constructing Damac Hills in Dubai, a master planned community of townhouses, hotels, shopping centers and Trump International Golf Club Dubai – the only Trump-branded and Trump Organization-operated golf club in the Middle East.

“They are a prolific group that builds unbelievable luxury developments worldwide,” said Michael T. Fay, managing director of the Capital Markets Group for Avison Young, who is marketing the property pro bono on behalf of the court.

Damac isn’t the only developer interested in the property. Fay told the Biscayne Times that he’s talked to several potential bidders and his company brochure about the property has been downloaded 200 times. An online court auction is projected for late February, when the winning bidder will be required to close within 30 days barring any issues, Fay explained.

But a couple of hours after the morning Sept. 23 hearing finished, a few dozen family and friends of those who died gathered at the building’s site to observe the three-month anniversary of the tragedy, and to convey a direct message – that nothing should be constructed on top of land where pieces of the deceased are still buried. Instead, they pleaded for someone – the federal government, the state of Florida, companies and/or private individuals – to buy the land so that it can be preserved as a memorial.

“Three months after the collapse, the remains of our loved ones have yet to be found. This land will forever be their resting place. Our hope is that the leaders of our community, the leaders of our state, and the leaders of our (federal) government respect and aid our efforts to build a memorial for 98 people,” said Martin Langesfeld, whose sister, 26-year-old Nicole Langesfeld, and brother-in-law, 28-year-old Luis Sadovnic, died in the collapse.

Aiding in those efforts is Monica Iken-Murphy, founder of September’s Mission in New York City. She fought resistance from neighbors and developers for several years to place a memorial and museum on the site of the World Trade Center to remember those who died on 9/11, including her own husband.

Iken-Murphy stressed that Champlain is an international disaster.

“People from 13 countries were impacted, probably more,” she said. “… It’s not a Miami issue, it’s not a Surfside issue. It’s a global issue where people all over the world died here.”

At the very least, she insists the process of selling the land should be slowed down to ensure that a residential high-rise or hotel isn’t constructed over a mass grave. Talk of placing a memorial elsewhere must end as well, Iken-Murphy added.

“These families are not going to go away, and this is not going to be the last of them. There are going to be more of them,” she declared. “People need to understand that there is going to be a memorial, right here. Not some other place. Right here.”

Compensating the condo unit owners, Iken-Murphy said, can be figured out later.

“First, we are going to navigate this. We are not thinking about money right now. It’s about the souls.”

But Moshe Candiotti, a 67-year-old retiree, told Iken-Murphy and others at the news conference that he’s still living in a hotel and isn’t sure how much longer he’ll be able to hold out.

“I agree with you. I want you to have a memorial,” said Candiotti. “But I paid out $350,000. If I don’t get that money, I have nowhere to live. I’m going to be on the street.”

Displaced by Disaster

Capponi has seen the need for financial assistance and relief amongst the survivors of the Champlain tragedy. His and other charitable organizations were on the ground immediately after the collapse, providing much-needed gift cards and hotel vouchers – not only to people who lived in Champlain Towers South, but also to people who left the neighboring Champlain Towers North and East towers due to structural concerns at their buildings. (Assistance for people living in the North and East towers ended July 12.)

Thanks to $373,000 in donated funds and contacts Capponi made over the years with real estate developers, hoteliers and local business people, GEM was able to distribute 250 necessity kits, hand out $31,000 in gift cards, feed first responders, and relocate 30 individuals, couples and families to new apartments. GEM even helped people obtain furniture and clothes. Retailers and restaurants also donated furniture and food, and hotels stepped up, too, giving two months’ free rent to the displaced.

What was more challenging, even with some property owners offering discounts, was finding a more permanent place for survivors to live. One reason was that some of the displaced were families with five or more children. Another is that some Jewish religious households needed to be within a mile of a synagogue. But the biggest complication is South Florida’s skyrocketing rents.

“The real estate market is crazy. There are people moving in from all over America … down to Miami,” Capponi said. “It is very hard for the average person to afford living here.”

Rosenthal said he had to pay $20,000 – five months of rent upfront – to secure his Brickell unit, an amount of cash he wouldn’t have been able to obtain without the help of GEM.

“I’m financially upside down,” said Rosenthal, who, like many other unit owners, invested tens of thousands of dollars upgrading residences that no longer exist.

Rosenthal, 73, had hoped he could sell his place for around $750,000, tap into his IRA account and retire at Century Village. Now, he might be forced to tap into that account and keep working.

“How many more years can I continue working?” he asked.

Capponi said he’s assisted retirees who planted most of their savings into purchasing a Champlain Towers South unit. One retiree in particular planned on using what remained of her savings and retirement fund on food, medicine and gas.

“It was never [planned] that she’d need to pay $3,000 a month rent,” Capponi said.

A Push to Move On

Susie Rodriguez, a flower wholesaler and a Champlain Towers South resident for 22 years, said she now pays $3,500 a month for rent at a Brickell apartment that’s smaller than her Champlain home. Aside from dealing with identity thieves who attempted to claim FEMA benefits in her name, Rodriguez said she’s also being hassled by her lender for the balance of her mortgage.

“They called on the day the building collapsed,” said Rodriguez, who was staying at her Alzheimer’s-stricken mother’s home in Miami Beach when the tower collapsed.

Rodriguez has been jostling with Surfside Town officials in an effort to preserve the site’s property rights so that survivors, family heirs and property owners can get some compensation when the property is sold. Rodriguez doubts that anyone will pay more than $120 million for the oceanfront land so that it can be turned into a memorial, plus the additional millions needed to construct it. Instead, it will only further restrict what could be constructed at the site, and thus reduce the land’s value.

“Our biggest asset is the land,” Rodriguez declared, adding that “some people can’t wait, however long [others] think they can, to collect the $150 million to pay us out.”

On behalf of the court, lobbyist Rodney Barreto said he asked officials at local, state and federal levels about buying the land to build a memorial on it, but there was “little appetite” to make such an investment, although some were keen on contributing toward a memorial's construction.

Randy Rose, a real estate broker who owned a second home at Champlain Towers South, argued that the shaded area in the northern part of North Shore Park in Miami Beach would make a fantastic spot for a memorial. Additionally, Rose said it’s possible that a memorial 25 feet wide and 200 feet long could be constructed along a town-owned easement just north of the collapsed building’s site. A memorial at the Surfside Tennis Center at 8750 Collins Ave. also has been suggested.

What isn’t practical is reserving the area where the building collapsed for a memorial, Rose stated. That would leave barely enough room to construct anything on the site.

“No matter what, it’s going to affect the [value] of the whole property, because you don’t have enough land on either side to [build something] that makes sense,” he said.

Complicating matters further was that the Town of Surfside was in the midst of changing the zoning code to encourage better-designed buildings with fewer units. In the case of Champlain Towers, the proposed zoning changes would have restricted a future building to just 80 residences. Following protests from condo unit owners, Surfside officials resolved to carve out an exception for the Champlain site to “give [owners] back exactly what they had,” as Commissioner Nelly Velasquez put it. The details of that arrangement are still being negotiated between court-appointed attorneys for the receiver and Surfside.

However, one party that was hardly consulted on the future of the site were the family members of the deceased, argued Rabbi Lisa Shrem, a Judaic studies teacher at Luria Academy in Brooklyn. Shrem's best friend, 54-year-old Estelle Hedaya, was the last person to be identified in the rubble, 33 days after the collapse. Most family members don’t live in Florida, either.

“Who is representing us and where are we being represented? We were the last to come to the game,” Shrem told the Biscayne Times. “Everyone was still grieving … and [we’re being told] we’re almost done … Excuse me? How is everyone so callous as to what happened?”

Survivors Unheard

Some family members did voice their insistence that a memorial be constructed at the site in earlier court hearings. To make it happen, Carlos Wainberg, an Aventura entrepreneur, suggested a land swap with the Town of Surfside. His plan would exchange the 1.88-acre site for the town’s 1.4-acre community center at 9301 Collins Ave. The community center would be sold to developers, with proceeds going to the Champlain fund. The old Champlain site would see the construction of a memorial and a new community center and park.

Wainberg's fiancée lost her 26-year-old brother, Andres Levine, in the tower collapse; both also lost numerous close friends. Wainberg said the families could help Surfside raise funds to construct an even larger state-of-the art community center as well as 100 parking spaces.

“The main drive is we don’t want a building to be built on top of the graves of our loved ones,” Wainberg said. “To us it is a burial site. All of the parts … of the victims were not found. That’s where they are buried.”

The concept was rejected by the Surfside Town Commission – Commissioner Eliana Salzhauer loudly denounced the idea as “delusional.” But Wainberg said he’s not ready to give up yet.

“I want the people to decide and right now they are not deciding,” he said.

A land swap must be approved by 60% of Surfside's voters and can only move forward if four Surfside town commissioners back the referendum idea. Three commissioners spoke out against it on Sept. 14.

Other family members are insistent that nothing be constructed on the site.

Ronit Felszer’s 21-year-old son, Ilan Naibryf, was visiting his girlfriend, Deborah Berezdivin, on the night of the collapse. Felszer, who immigrated with her family from South America, said “it’s unacceptable that the last place where my son was alive that there’s anything but a memorial. I moved the five of us in 2002 because I believed in America,” she told the media on Sept. 24. “The America I dreamed of does not build over dead people or mass graves.”

In the meantime, Joe Zevuloni, founder of Strong for Surfside, vowed to assist displaced residents like Candiotti with temporary housing needs. As for the site, Zevuloni believes the federal government should buy it.

“If they can give the Taliban $70 billion worth of arms, they can give these families $200 million, period,” he declared. “End of discussion.”

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