A former luxury high-rise in Brickell has come to this: sex workers in the hallways, loud music and arguments late at night, overflowing garbage, half the elevators out of order, and more in a litany of complaints. Residents of the Club at Brickell Bay have reported all of that and more to city officials, and now they\u2019re finally getting some action on their behalf.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The building is massive. Forty-three floors, 643 units, and 88% of them are short-term rentals. That leaves the actual residents there feeling under siege from a constant deluge of partying tourists.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s been hell, absolute hell,\u201d said Christina Lardon.<\/p>\n
She bought her apartment in 2008, long before the short-term rental\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI never envisioned anything like this could possibly happen,\u201d Lardon said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Police officers are regulars at the building. Just last week, a tourist fell to his death from the 34th\u00a0floor. The police report says he had been drinking and smoking pot. Lardon says she feels trapped in a 24-hour party which has turned into a nightmare.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve been accosted, I\u2019ve been screamed at, I\u2019ve been called a Karen in the middle of the night because people were running up and down the hallway,\u201d Lardon said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
She says she\u2019s one of the few residents willing to speak out, as the building\u2019s board is run entirely by owners who rent out their units. In fact, Lardon said on Friday, she was blocked from joining a Zoom meeting of the board.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople come to Miami to party, that\u2019s what they\u2019re doing, they\u2019re partying excessively through all hours of the night, they have no respect for our rules, our peaceful enjoyment, nothing; it constantly has the aroma of marijuana, our building is breaking down, they destroyed the gym,\u201d Lardon said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
She told us complaints to the city went nowhere until the Miami Herald ran a front-page story on all the issues at the Brickell Bay Club. Then last Tuesday, the Miami assistant city manager sent a cease-and-desist letter to building management, saying it was operating like a hotel in violation of Florida law, creating a significant life safety issue.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThey are listening, and I am so grateful, but now I need action,\u201d Lardon said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The letter from the city accuses building management of refusing to let city code inspectors inside, and it says many one- and two-bedroom units have been altered to create multiple rooms, allowing 10 or more people to cram into a single apartment. The city gave the building 30 days to stop allowing short-term rentals.\u00a0<\/p>\n
We reached out to the property manager but did not receive a reply.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A former luxury high-rise in Brickell has come to this: sex workers in the hallways, loud music and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":371857,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[123,125,124],"class_list":["post-371856","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-miami","tag-miami","tag-miami-headlines","tag-miami-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/371856","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=371856"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/371856\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/371857"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=371856"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=371856"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=371856"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}