Miami condo owners in luxury towers on the beach sue companies over safety concerns

A condo association at a pair of luxurious beachfront towers in Bal Harbour is suing the companies that own and manage the common areas, alleging that negligence and poor maintenance has led to safety risks including electrocution and the stability of the parking garage.

The lawsuit by unit owners at the 12-year-old St. Regis Bal Harbour Residences comes more than three years after the collapse of the Champlain Towers South in Surfside, about a mile south along the Atlantic shore.

Lawyers for the Bal Harbour North South Condominium Association, which represents unit owners, filed suit Nov. 4 in Miami-Dade Circuit Court. The association governs the Bal Harbour North South Condominium, two towers of a combined 205 residential units better known as the St. Regis Bal Harbour Residences. The complex is on Collins Avenue and 97th Street, across from the landmark Bal Harbour Shops..

The defendants are Qatar-based Al Rayyan Tourism Investment Co., known as ARTIC; U.S affiliate Seldar Miami Holding; ARTIC chief executive Tarek El Sayed; and ARTIC manager Gregory Polino. Seldar, an ARTIC holding company, owns the St. Regis Bal Harbour Resort, which consists of the luxury five-star St. Regis Bal Harbour Hotel and the St. Regis Bal Harbour Residences.

The companies or people named in the suit didn’t respond to the Miami Herald for comment.

What the condo lawsuit alleges

The association lawsuit alleges that the building owners neglected crucial health, safety and structural repairs for years in the common or “shared” areas that they’re responsible for under condo bylaws.

“Urgent action is required to return the Resort to a safe condition and protect the health of the residents, employees, and guests at the Residences and Resort — as well as the public at large,” the lawsuit said. “Without urgent assessment and repair efforts, the consequences may be catastrophic.”

The condo association requested on Nov. 7 that a judge force the building owners to pay for the condominium association’s chosen experts to repair the problems. The condo owners want the judge to order the repairs before making a full ruling, Juan Morillo, partner at Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan, which represents the North South Condominium Association, told the Miami Herald.

The claims mostly cover the residential towers, and include allegations of widespread flooding in the parking garage and inside several condos and the gyms. The suit says that flooding has led to structural defects that include cracking in the concrete pillars holding up the garage, and the corrosion of steel supports in the complex. The owners “have ignored widespread water intrusion throughout the Resort,” the lawsuit alleges.

Fallout from the issues

The flooding has caused “extensive damage to structural components of the Resort, including the parking garage where portions of the ceiling are ominously held up by temporary shoring posts; the Residences’ crumbling facades; the life-safety systems, such as the perpetually flooded and moldy egress stairs that are crucial to evacuation during a fire, hurricane, or other emergency,” the lawsuit said.

The suit also mentions defects in electrical systems, including the fire sprinkler system and exposed electrical wires that lay wet and corroded, and flooding elevators.

The lawsuit calls building owners’ behavior willfully and grossly negligent, saying that property bylaws hold them responsible for shared or common spaces. It asks for a judicial order requiring the defendants to inspect the property, ensure all the needed repairs are made in a timely fashion and pay for all costs.

Other problems cited in the lawsuit include chipped and crumbling building facades leading to one warning posted outside the towers for residents: “CAUTION: Please Watch For Possible Falling Debris.”

Colonies of mold are also growing throughout the towers, found on condo walls, unit owners’ furniture and electronics, according to the suit.

How the St. Regis Bal Harbour Hotel is affected

While many of the problems affect the condo residents, some also affect hotel guests, including a parking garage that floods and the funding of a restaurant with association funds, the lawsuit claims.

“There is widespread leakage through expansion joints, and the under-slab drainage system is clogged and nonfunctional, causing water to push up through the floor slabs,” the complaint said.

The lawsuit also accuses the owners of financial mismanagement, citing “improperly siphoned funds belonging to the [Condo] Association and earmarked for crucial repairs and used those resident funds to subsidize projects benefiting the defendants — including a new luxury café at the St. Regis Hotel.”

The suit says that more than $1.5 million that should have been designated for maintenance and repairs instead went to remodel the hotel café, La Gourmandise.

Former site of a landmark hotel

The St. Regis is on the site once home to the Americana Hotel, which opened there in 1956. The Americana later became the Sheraton Bal Harbour. The hotel was demolished in 2007.

The St. Regis Resort and Residences was completed in 2012. The then-owner, Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide, sold it to ARTIC in January 2014.

Today, the St. Regis Resort and Residences consists of three 27-story towers with over 2 million square feet. One of the buildings is the hotel, the St. Regis Bal Harbour Hotel, at 9703 Collins Ave.

Condos are in the other two towers. A two-story underground parking garage connects the three high-rises.

The defendants in the St. Regis lawsuit

The St. Regis owners are Doha, Qatar-based ARTIC, a hospitality and real estate investment firm. The subsidiary of Al Faisal Holding, a Qatari company founded by H.E. Sheikh Faisal Bin Qassim Al Thani, has investments in over 35 hotel or real estate properties worldwide, including the W Miami in Brickell and the Crowne Plaza Times Square Hotel in New York.

ARTIC owns the St. Regis through Seldar, a limited liability Delaware company with principal base of business 9703 Collins Ave., Bal Harbour, site of the St. Regis Bal Harbour Resort.

El Sayed, the chief executive of ARTIC, lives in Chicago and is a director of the condo association, a reason that plaintiffs claim he has known of the problems for years.

“Mr. El Sayed has knowingly and deliberately participated in ARTIC’s obstructionist conduct and has at all times relevant been at the helm of ARTIC’s wrongdoing at the Resort,” the lawsuit alleges. “He is ultimately responsible for ARTIC’s obstructionist conduct and its decision to place the company’s bottom line over the maintenance and repair of the Residential Unit Owners’ property.”

Polino lives in Miami and is USA director of operations for ARTIC. He regularly attends Bal Harbour North South Condominium Association board meetings. That’s in part why the plaintiffs contend the building owners have known about the issues.

Morillo, their lawyer, says ARTIC has received “hundreds of complaints” from unit owners, but has shown “no real concerted effort” to fix things, even with condo unit owners paying the bill. But when gross negligence and willful misconduct is shown, the costs become the responsibility of the complex’s owners, Morillo said.

How officials started getting involved

In January 2022, a Miami-Dade Fire Rescue Department official inspected the building. He then notified Bal Harbour. Days later, a village official visited.

“During my walk-thru, I observed several areas of concern,” village building official Eliezer Palacio wrote in a letter to St. Regis Bal Harbour Resort obtained by the Miami Herald. He told them of “structural damage I observed” and “needed structural and electrical repairs.” He recommended that the complex owner hire a professional inspector and an electrical engineer to assess the problems and plan compliance with Florida’s Building Code.

In March 2022, Kimberly Horn & Associates, a firm hired by the complex’s owners, told Bal Harbour officials in a letter that they found the condo buildings “structurally safe for continual occupancy and use,” after visiting that month. It recommended “isolated repairs” such as to the building’s electrical system. It cited water intrusion, including in the gyms in both condo towers, cracked concrete and corroded steel supports. Later that year, unit owners were told Kimberly Horn had hired a water intrusion expert.

But in January 2024, the condo association learned that “nothing, or at least close to nothing, had been done during the preceding two years since hiring Kimberly Horn,” the the condo association lawsuit states.

Then at a July 29, 2024, meeting of the condo association’s board, members were told Kimberly Horn was no longer working for the complex’s owners. Polino, one of the defendants, attended the meeting by video conference, but when asked what happened, his “connection conspicuously disconnected,” the lawsuit said. One person said there had not been “a proper maintenance program in place for 12 years.”

In October, an independent expert hired by the plaintiffs visited the complex. Benjamin Cornelius, an engineer with New York-based LERA Construction Structural Engineer International, arrived on Oct. 8 and Oct. 24.

His report, included in the lawsuit, found “severe, widespread, ongoing water intrusion occurring at the complex which appears to be due in large part to the deferral of maintenance and inadequate repair efforts.” He said that flooding had “damaged ... the structure ... and has resulted in unsafe conditions.”

Delaying repair and maintenance in past years, the report said, “has increased the scope of the repair work necessary to restore the complex to a safe condition.”