Posted on 12/01/2025 6:50:25 AM PST by Miami Rebel
When developers began transforming the kitschy waterfront motels of Sunny Isles Beach into luxury high-rise condos and hotels more than two decades ago, they were confident they understood the challenges of erecting massive towers on shifting sand. They were wrong. It turned out to be far more complicated than anyone expected. Within just a few years, engineers discovered they’d underestimated how much some buildings would sink on a barrier island composed of varying layers of sand, silt, peat and porous limestone — much the same material underlying many of South Florida’s premier oceanfront properties. In their own reports filed with the city, geotechnical engineers acknowledged the miscalculations. As one firm wrote a decade into the building boom: “We note that this area of Sunny Isles has had several tower structures settle significantly more than predicted.”
(Excerpt) Read more at miamiherald.com ...
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A few years back, I went to a client's funeral on 41st Street (Arthur Godfrey Road) on a Sunday morning. It had rained LIGHTLY overnight, but I had to walk dead center in the four-lane street to avoid getting my shoes soaked.
As a Miami native, it is hilarious and confounding to me that carpetbaggers from New York and elsewhere have been shelling out millions and even tens of millions from condos and houses that regularly flood.
Aside from the environmental issues, we have experienced a speculative bubble starting with COVID in which home prices in South Florida have jumped 50-100% (similar increases were experienced on the west coast too.) That's starting to reverse in Miami, and on the opposite coast prices are deflating fast.
Any Mamdani refugees would be advised to rent before buying down here....or to look elsewhere.
I remember some heavy rains in Homestead. The drainage ditches...canals that would swallow cars...could not keep up. The walking catfish were a nice touch. They didn’t have to walk far to find more water.
Link dead-ends at drone footage, not the article.
A couple of years ago a condo tower building somewhere near Miami collapsed...killing 100 and causing a billion dollars of damage. With the heat,humidity and proximity to the ocean one would expect concrete to deteriorate over time. And the soft ground beneath these big buildings would be expected to subside over time.
Link worked for me on a computer. May not work on a phone.
A couple of years ago a condo tower building somewhere near Miami collapsed
“the deadly 2021 collapse of the Champlain Towers condo in Surfside” is discussed in the article if you had read it.
Why anyone would still build on the beach is beyond me. Unless, they don’t expect to be alive in 20 years to face the consequenses.
But, not discussed the article is the idea of digging a hole down the 200 feet to the bedrock. I assume it sould be astronomical to do so.
and people will want others to bail them out by using government.
Never understood why people wanted to build on the ocean.
This right here is the key to the climate change propaganda.
When you aggregate the data, it is not that the seas are rising. The water is not going up. The land is going down.
The land is going down because there is too much weight.
This is why areas where there is not a lot of weight(or enough to cause sinking) the seas are never said to be rising.
Greed will cause people to overlook or ignore the obvious.
But isn't that bedrock limestone, which it itself continually undermined by subsurface water?
in all coastal areas where bedrock is unreachable, friction against the pilings alone holds the structures up, whether they be a bridge or a highrise ...
“But, not discussed the article is the idea of digging a hole down the 200 feet to the bedrock.”
they never hit bedrock: the purpose of drilling deeper is to provide more friction against longer pilings to hold the building up ...
So it’s NOT rising sea levels?
They just need to find a place in the Florida mountains. I think the peak elevation is around 25ft. </s>
One of my customers from the Detroit area sold his ocean front condo in Boca about seven years ago. Mostly because he said the rebar inside the concrete was all rusting and needed to be replaced.
This was a high rise building that did not allow weekly rentals. He bought it back in the 1970s or 80s.
I’m in the process of building a bridge across a creek in the central CA coast. The piles (5 per abutment; 12”) were driven to refusal into sandstone. The geologist and engineer agree that the friction without bottom rock is sufficient to carry
the load (~90 ton dead, 80 live).
Here’s a whoops:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium_Tower_(San_Francisco)
Florida sits on limestone bedrock. Contemporary engineering standards do a better job of making sure that tall buildings in Florida have proper foundations.
That is the building in San Fran that Joe Montana and several other rich people own condos they paid $2M for.
The issue is most of San Fran is land fill from the earth quake. The bedrock is down about 200’. All the buildings in that area use friction piles down 70-90’. None of the other buildings in the area are settling except this one.
Has anyone led an expedition to the peak of it to see what’s there.
Never understood why people wanted to build on the ocean.
—
That was the prevailing sentiment among the hill people just before the Younger Dryas Event ended and sea level rose 400 feet world wide ...
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