MIAMI – For the first time Wednesday, survivors of the Surfside condo collapse shared in court how they want the land to be used.
Several condo owners stood before a Miami-Dade circuit court judge to convince him to let a developer build a new building on the site of the Champlain Towers South because they want to keep living there.
The condo owners, however, are divided on what to do with the land, which is worth an estimated $100 million dollars.
Some want a memorial on the site to honor the victims.
Others say the two options are not mutually exclusive, that you can have a new condo building there and a memorial.
“It’s an opportunity to live in an area like that that doesn’t come around very often and to replace it now for a lot of these owners will be almost mission impossible, considering where home prices are, especially beachfront property,” said Oren Cytrynbaum, who bought a condo unit at Champlain Towers South years ago because it was spacious and right on the ocean. “I mean, that was taken away from a lot of people and that’s why a lot of people feel they would like their home back.”
To this point, 97 bodies have been recovered from the rubble of the June 24 tragedy, with 95 of them identified.
Right now, the court is considering selling the land so the money can be used to pay compensation to survivors who lost their homes and to family members of victims who were killed or injured in the collapse.
The purpose of Wednesday’s two-hour court hearing was for the judge to get an update on how much money is available to pay the victims.
The court-appointed receiver said the condo board had about a million dollars cash on hand. There are about $50 million in insurance proceeds, and about $2 million dollars in compensation has already been paid to the victims.
Sky 10 video taken Wednesday shows how different the collapse site looks now the rubble has been cleared out.
Some of the debris is being saved in a warehouse as evidence for the investigation into how the building collapsed. The rest is being stored in a lot so survivors and families can go through it at a later date to retrieve their belongings.
