Florida has a long history of unwarranted optimism when it comes to coastal building risk.

Faced with a disturbing new University of Miami study, the coastal town of Sunny Isles Beach in Miami-Dade did not disappoint.

“No buildings in Sunny Isles Beach are sinking!” the city’s mayor protested to Newsweek.

But they are.

In North and Central Sunny Isles Beach, nearly 70% of condos and hotels examined by researchers slipped into the ground between 2016 and 2023. Although Sunny Isles and Surfside appear hardest hit, there’s early evidence Broward and Palm Beach shorelines may follow suit.

Environmental voices from former Florida governor and U.S. Sen. Bob Graham to author John D. McDonald’s fictional detective Travis McGee have warned that building on Florida shorelines courts disaster. If the UM study is right, disaster is on our doorstep.

Built on shifting sand

To date, most of Florida’s environmental anxiety has focused on flooding and hurricanes, as climate change whips up more and bigger storms. Those are valid concerns, but we should have kept one eye on the ground beneath us.

Some settling, or subsidence, is normal. But along the Miami-Dade coast, 35 condos and hotels have sunk as much as three inches, researchers reported, including such millionaire perches as The Ritz-Carlton Residences and Trump International Beach Resorts.

They were built on shifting sand.

The Sunny Isles mayor isn’t the only skeptic of the researchers’ findings. “We didn’t believe it at the beginning,” one researcher told the Miami Herald.

Nothing that raises the risk profile of a Florida condo or hints at future repair bills is good news right now.

Already, seniors are being priced out of condos as a state law aimed at preventing another Surfside condo collapse generates steep assessments on long-delayed inspections and repairs. The number of condos for sale is rising and prices are falling across the state as owners leave. The exodus is not limited to the coast: According to a January 2024 report by real estate firm Redfin, Orlando’s median condo price fell 4.8% over the prior 12 months.

But the bad news in the research isn’t limited to existing condos. It threatens to undercut future development.

Underground sand moves. Vibrations move it. And building new high-rises, with the need for pilings driven deep into the ground, is all about vibration. It’s why there are state rules governing how much vibration is allowed during both tear-downs and building.

Cracks in the concrete

A civil suit brought by Millennium Condominium Association in 2017 illustrated why. When Porsche Design Tower rose next to Millennium on Collins Avenue in Sunny Isles Beach, cracks started appearing in the older condo.

Photos of damage attached to the lawsuit are gray and grainy, not dramatic. But to anyone who has seen pictures of cracks in Surfside’s Champlain Towers South parking garage before the condo fell and killed 98 people, images of cracks in Millennium’s underground parking garage are chilling.

Millennium’s suit, which sought money for repairs, was settled for undisclosed terms. And although the Champlain condo had been sinking, the condo is believed to have collapsed because of flawed design, construction and maintenance, not changes in underground sand.

Even so, researchers repeatedly found subsidence dovetailed with new condo and hotel construction. Subsidence at Trump Tower III, for instance, occurred as construction on the next-door Ritz-Carlton Residences was underway.

Further, in some cases, sinking set in motion by new construction persisted eight years after the building was completed.

“Ongoing monitoring and a deeper understanding of the long-term implications” is needed, wrote one of the researchers.

It started with Scott

But Tallahassee’s willful refusal to acknowledge that nature will do what nature wants to do has only grown since 2011.

That was the year Gov. Rick Scott gutted growth management and opened the floodgates to building on vulnerable oceanfront land. Hurricane Ian laid bare the foolishness of Scott’s actions when it wiped out thousands of homes in coastal Fort Myers.

Scott has decamped to the U.S. Senate, leaving the mess to Gov. Ron DeSantis. But DeSantis endorsed Scott’s general philosophy in the wake of Hurricane Milton when he dismissed the idea that the state should consider limiting coastal development. It’s not government’s job, he said.

Nor should anyone fret about property values, added DeSantis, who’s well aware that Florida’s economy is perilously dependent on coastal development.

“I think that there’s always going to be a demand to live in a beautiful part of the world,” he confidently told reporters.

There is, but no one knowingly seeks to live in those parts of a beautiful world where the kitchen floor is slowly sinking beneath their feet.

To serve Floridians whose homes are at risk and whose real estate purchases fuel the state economy, DeSantis needs to stop attacking reporting on the problem and start attacking the problem itself.

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The Orlando Sentinel Editorial Board includes Executive Editor Roger Simmons, Opinion Editor Krys Fluker and Viewpoints Editor Jay Reddick. The Sun Sentinel Editorial Board consists of Executive Editor Gretchen Day-Bryant, Editorial Page Editor Steve Bousquet, Deputy Editorial Page Editor Dan Sweeney and editorial writers Pat Beall and Martin Dyckman. Send letters to insight@orlandosentinel.com.

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