3 minute read
MIAMI PAUSES WORK ON ‘DEEPEST’ UNDERGROUND GARAGE
Miami building officials decided to pause construction of the city’s “deepest” subterranean parking garage Nov. 16 to conduct a holistic engineering evaluation following a series of groundwater breaches and complaints from concerned Brickell residents.
The garage is beneath the Una Residences luxury condominium tower in Miami’s Brickell neighborhood. Local developer OKO Group proposes a 47-story residential tower at the site, with units starting at $2 million. It also will include a three-level basement, which the developer touts as “Miami’s deepest, most expensive underground garage.”
However, since October, two breaches of the water table have occurred at the site, located at 175 SE 25th Rd., and residents of neighboring properties have voiced their concerns about the impact the breaches could have on their buildings, especially in the wake of last summer’s deadly Surfside condo collapse.
An aerial view of the evacuation site Nov. 16 showed the pooling of water in a different section of the cavernous pit where water bubbled to the surface on Nov. 12 in a second breach.
A spokesperson of Miami-Dade County’s Department of Regulatory & Economic Resources (DERM) told WPLG-TV Local 10 News in Miami that the water “will keep coming into the site” until engineers fix “what’s known as the tremie seal.” The agency considers the issue to be an operational one rather than an environmental violation.
Those same officials noted that Nov. 12’s breach was capped by engineers Nov. 17 and a stop-work order on this project was issued. Currently, three engineers have been brought in to evaluate what impact, if any, the project is having on surrounding properties.
This will include a geotechnical engineer, a structural engineer and a seismic testing engineer. Miami Commissioner Ken Russell said this was being done as a precautionary measure and that the building department will cover all costs and the trio of engineers will report their findings to the city.
Mandy Karnauskas lives in Brickell Townhouse, next to the Una Residences under construction. In speaking with WPLG-TV, she said the second upwelling of water at Una happened one day after her management company sent residents an email saying that their structural engineer claimed their property is experiencing impacts from the construction site’s first breach in October.
The management company claimed the project is causing soil erosion, which has caused the brick pavers in their tiki hut area to shift.
“We see the ground actually moving, a piece of our property is sinking, and our little tiki picnic huts are starting to keel over,” Karnauskas said.
Ant Yapi, of Civic Construction in Miami, the general contractor of Una Residences, has stated that “our team is remediating these leaks as they happen, and there is no evidence of impacts on surrounding properties.”
Experts Call for
Thorough Exam of Site
“I think it is a very good idea to pause and check the situation,” said Shimon Wdowinski, of Florida International University’s Institute of Environment. He is an expert in land subsidence, sea-level rise, sinkhole activities, wetland hydrology, earthquakes and other natural hazards.
Wdowinski explained that the geotechnical engineer at Una Residences will “deal with the earth underneath the buildings” to “evaluate the property of the soil at the building site or next to the building site to see if there were any changes to the soil.”
In addition, he said the role of a structural engineer would be to evaluate if there is “any damage to the buildings” with an analysis that would consist of “looking [to see] if the columns or the walls or any new cracks formed in the building, [and] to see if there were any changes to the building itself.”
As for the seismic testing engineer, he told the Miami television station that that person would collect data about “the movement of the ground — the elastic movement of the ground — to see how much movement in the vicinity of the building” may be happening to “evaluate if there is a problem that may cause damage to the buildings.”
