A handful of towers in Sunny Isles Beach are sinking much more than expected, raising questions about whether monitoring settlement should be a requirement across South Florida’s barrier islands.
The Miami Herald examined dozens of engineering reports covering the majority of the city skyline. Experts told the publication that it’s difficult to determine how much newer towers will settle in Sunny Isles Beach.
After buildings are completed, they typically settle into the ground, but unexpected sinking that’s excessive or uneven can create problems over time. Those issues include cracked pipes and facades, and doors, windows and floors that become uneven.
For newer towers under construction in Sunny Isles, which include Dezer Development’s Bentley Residences and the two-tower St. Regis Residences, the foundations can extend up to 20 stories below ground — 200 feet. Dezer secured a $630 million construction loan for the project from Madison Realty Capital last month. And Bank OZK boosted the construction financing for Fortune International Group and Château Group’s St. Regis Residences in Sunny Isles Beach to $418.3 million.
None of the experts the newspaper interviewed suggested any immediate concerns of structural or safety issues. But no one is monitoring how towers settle and shift after they are completed and what effect that is having on neighboring buildings.
Nearly three dozen buildings from Miami Beach to Sunny Isles Beach are sinking at “unexpected” rates, researchers found in a University of Miami study published a year ago.
The buildings identified included the Four Seasons Residences at the Surf Club in Surfside, and in Sunny Isles, the Porsche Design Tower and Estates at Acqualina. The study relied on satellite images over the seven-year period that used reference points such as building balconies, air conditioning units and boardwalks to measure the buildings’ shifts, and looked at the skyline from 2016 to 2023.
Subsidence, or sinking, ranging from two to eight centimeters (less than an inch to about three inches) was found, with the most significant effects in Sunny Isles.
— Katherine Kallergis
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