Fort Lauderdale condo at beach deemed unsafe; residents told to be out by Friday

Residents of a condo on Fort Lauderdale’s barrier island were ordered to evacuate by noon Friday after the building’s foundation was found to be unsafe, a city official said Thursday.

The evacuation order, relayed by the building’s engineer of record, had residents at the 18-unit Springbrook Gardens condo scrambling to find a new place to stay on short notice.

“Everybody was in shock,” said Warren Sackler, a retired professor from New York who moved into the condo nearly 20 years ago.

Sackler, 74, paid $370,000 for a one-bedroom unit in 2007. Nine years later, he bought the unit next door for $358,000, knocked down a wall and doubled his living space.

On Thursday, he was packing up his belongings and moving to a nearby condo that had a unit available for rent.

“I lucked out,” Sackler said. “Some people are not even here. I would say out of 18 units, five or six people are out of town right now. This is their second home.”

Fort Lauderdale is trying to connect residents with resources to help them find a place to stay, city spokeswoman Ashley Doussard said. “There’s only 12 people living there right now. Some of the residents are snowbirds.”

The fact that Hurricane Helene was delaying flights and fouling up the weather in Fort Lauderdale only complicated matters, Sackler said.

“They can’t even get here to take care of things,” he said. “The flights are all delayed because of the hurricane.”

Sackler now worries that he and his neighbors might not be able to afford the repairs required to make their building, which ranges from two to four stories, safe again.

A Sept. 24 report from Specialty Engineering Consultants, the building’s engineer of record, says progressive deterioration in the western portion of the structure has made the building no longer safe for residents.

“We urge and request the city of Fort Lauderdale to revoke the certificate of occupancy of the building until the necessary repairs have been made for the inhabitants to safely return,” the letter says.

Condo owners across Florida are nervous about the rising cost of major building repairs.

In 2021, the 12-story Champlain Towers South came tumbling down at 1:22 a.m. on June 24 in Surfside, killing 98 people. That deadly tragedy resulted in a statewide crackdown, with new and stricter safety inspections for older buildings taller than two stories.

“I don’t think they can fix the building,” Sackler said Thursday. “The engineer told us that just one part is $1 million to fix. We don’t know what the grand total is to fix everything.”

Sackler says he’s hoping to find a silver lining.

“Maybe someone will want to buy the building and knock it down,” he said. “We had an offer a year and a half ago but not everyone wanted to sell. I called the gentleman yesterday and asked if he’d still be interested. He said he was. Whatever he’d offer, we’d divide among 18 units.”

In the meantime, Sackler was trying to sort through his belongings.

“The hardest part is figuring out what to take and what’s going to go in storage and what’s going to be given away or sold,” he said. “You think I’m gonna sleep tonight?”

Susannah Bryan can be reached at sbryan@sunsentinel.com . Follow me on X @Susannah_Bryan