The board members of Admiral’s Walk, a 17-floor beachfront condo building in Boca Raton, wasted no time after the Champlain Towers South building in Surfside collapsed: They wanted to ensure their own building would never be at risk of such a disaster.
Daniel Gonzalez, the condo’s property manager, recalled sitting down with the board’s president, Howard Somers, the day after the Surfside building came down on June 24, 2021, claiming the lives of 98 people. Gonzalez and Somers started planning what needed to be done to assess the state of their nearly 50-year-old building — to ensure residents’ safety.
They’re now proud that Admiral’s Walk, with 68 units at 4545 N. Ocean Blvd., recently became the first condo building in the city to receive a 30-year building recertification since the Surfside tragedy. It also marks a milestone for Boca Raton, which is well underway with an inspection program.
For the city, deeming a building as recertified means it meets specific structural and electrical safety requirements, showing no signs of distress on its columns, for example, and displaying good surface conditions, such as not having cracks on a roof.
“We wanted to get ahead of the curve,” Gonzalez said. “Within two weeks of Surfside collapsing, we had already had an engineer.”
Somers called it “the right thing to do.” He added, “We’re very proud being the very first building.”
Seeking inspections
Gonzalez had expected there would be legislation in the works to address building safety, and his prediction was right. In May 2022, Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a bill requiring statewide recertification of condominiums more than three stories tall.
But before state action, Boca Raton, like the Admiral’s Walk, was well ahead of the curve. On Aug. 24, 2021, two months after the Champlain Tower collapse, the city passed an ordinance establishing the recertification inspection program, becoming the first city in Palm Beach County to do so.
“We weren’t trying to be first, we just happened to act quickly for the benefit of our residents,” Boca Raton Mayor Scott Singer said. “It’s business as usual. We often move first.”
Singer also had safety in mind after the Surfside tragedy: He asked the city manager the same day of the collapse what Boca Raton needed to do to “shore up” recertification and began by looking to the examples set by Broward and Miami-Dade counties’ recertification processes.
“When you see a tragic loss of so many lives, you think about what that means for a community,” he said. “It’s easy to picture what that would mean if it were your building, your community, and our hearts broke for everyone who suffered a loss, and many people in Boca Raton had friends or family members in that building.”
Boca Raton’s recertification program
Buildings subject to recertification in Boca Raton include those 30 years or older, buildings with heights more than three stories or 50 feet, or are more than 5,000 square feet and have an occupancy of more than 500 people.
More than 325 buildings are currently in the recertification process in the city.
The city is operating on a four-year schedule with four different geographic zones. The first zone is for buildings located east of the Intracoastal Waterway on the barrier island; the second zone is for buildings along the Intracoastal Waterway west of Dixie Highway; the third zone is all buildings from Dixie Highway to west of Interstate 95 and the fourth and final zone is all buildings west of I-95.
The state stepped up
In the months following the collapse, Palm Beach County Commissioners discussed implementing stricter building inspection policies but concluded they wanted the state to take the reins.
“The state did what we hoped for,” said Commissioner Gregg Weiss, who served on the commission during those conversations. “They did step up and put legislation in place.”
Finding funding has posed a challenge for some of the communities with buildings requiring recertification, but ultimately, safety trumps those challenges, he said.
Weiss said he’s pleased with what the state put together, now requiring statewide recertification of condominiums over three stories tall. Structural safety inspections will be required for buildings by the year the building turns 30, (or 25 years if the building is within 3 miles of the coast), and every 10 years afterward.
At the time of the Surfside collapse, Miami-Dade and Broward counties were the only two of the state’s 67 that had condominium recertification programs, The Associated Press reported.
Like going to the dentist
Repairs were in order for the Admiral’s Walk after the engineering firm Hillman Engineering conducted an assessment of the building’s condition.
According to the report, “concrete restoration” was required, especially because steel corrosion, as it relates to concrete structures, may grow worse with time.
“Once the surface of the concrete has been compromised and the steel is in direct contact with the elements, the
corrosion has the potential to spread rapidly,” the firm wrote in the report.
But Hillman Engineering also found that for its age, and when compared with other buildings the firm evaluates, Admiral’s Walk had been maintained well and had an overall ‘above average’ condition due to frequent upkeep.
“We do painting and evaluation on a five-year cycle,” said Somers, who also is licensed professional engineer.
The painting seals the building from environmental conditions, which, for this beachfront building, means water, salt and a lot of wind. Somers likened it to regular dentist visits — in the same way that teeth maintenance prevents against issues like cavities, building maintenance prevents against severe structural issues.
This may have reduced the overall cost of the recertification, too. From beginning to end, the project cost about $1 million, said Collin D’Silva, the condo board’s treasurer, but that could have been a much higher figure had it not been for routine care.
The Admiral’s Walk, which will turn 50 years old next year, received official recertification on Nov. 16 from the city, and it will expire in exactly 10 years from that date.
Meanwhile, the probe into the Surfside collapse should be completed by the fourth anniversary of the disaster, by June 2025, The Associated Press reported in September. The investigation, led by the National Institute of Standards & Technology, is looking into two dozen different scenarios that could explain why the 12-story Champlain Towers South building abruptly failed.
