In a city full of sky-scraping condos, this one would be the tallest, and the neighbors are furious.<\/p>\n
Developers will begin construction on a 62-story luxury apartment building next year on the beach in Sunny Isles Beach, after they demolish the old, low-rise Miami Beach Club building. Objections to the project range from added traffic to the environmental impact on sea turtles during nesting season.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The building next door, the Armani, is also massive, and it would still be more than 200 feet shorter than the new tower.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is the wrong building, in the wrong spot, at the wrong time,\u201d said Joel Simon, a resident of the Armani.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a disaster waiting to happen even now,\u201d added another resident, Dr. Joe Levine.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Residents of the Armani building told us they don\u2019t have a problem with the site next door being redeveloped, even saying they believe the developers have good intentions. However, they say they\u2019re worried about how this particular project will affect the quality of life for the entire city.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThey absolutely know what they\u2019re doing, we\u2019re concerned about the sheer size, the proximity to our building, the impact on traffic, all of these things that I\u2019ve mentioned are of major concern and the city of Sunny Isles really needs to step up and say we need to take a breath here, and see how we\u2019re gonna protect the people who already live here and not destroy this beautiful stretch of land that we have,\u201d Simon said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The board members of the Armani are meeting with an attorney, looking at any legal avenues they might have, hoping they can persuade the developers to scale down their project. Their biggest concern might be the safety impact of adding even more traffic to the already congested Collins Avenue and how that might affect first responders, especially with three other towers already under construction nearby.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd this is not just about Sunny Isles residents, this is about all the people who pass through Sunny Isles to go to Golden Beach, go to Hallandale, Hollywood, go to Bal Harbour, Surfside, this is a conduit,\u201d Simon explained.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThe buildings that were built in the past, the infrastructure of the city could handle them; we\u2019ve reached a maximum of what the infrastructure can handle,\u201d Levine said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
After the tragedy of the Surfside building collapse, the Armani residents are also worried about how construction next door might impact their building\u2019s foundation.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201c100%, I\u2019m not a geologist or an engineer, but absolutely,\u201d Simon emphasized.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The Sunny Isles Beach city commission will discuss this project at its meeting Thursday night, but one commissioner told NBC6 that even if every commissioner voted to halt the construction, they are powerless to stop it; the developers have the right to proceed.\u00a0<\/p>\n
We asked the Related Group and BH Group, the principal developers, for a statement, but we have not received one.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The Armani residents said they are hoping the city will conduct an independent study on the project\u2019s traffic impact and on the geological soundness of building a tower that high on the beach.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In a city full of sky-scraping condos, this one would be the tallest, and the neighbors are furious.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":162266,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[123,125,124,32023],"class_list":["post-162265","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-miami","tag-miami","tag-miami-headlines","tag-miami-news","tag-sunny-isles-beach"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162265","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=162265"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162265\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/162266"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=162265"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=162265"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=162265"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}