A Bitter Multi-Million-Dollar Fight Over What to Do At Surfside Collapse Site
The New York Times
What to do with the property? There is no easy way to both honor victims and compensate condo owners.
SURFSIDE, Fla. — Unbearable grief absorbed Anabella Levine when Champlain Towers South collapsed in Florida this summer, burying her beloved older brother and three cousins in the rubble of her building while she was away for the night. Identifying some of the remains took an excruciating 18 days.
What she did not expect — what has consumed many of her recent days, even as she struggles with her family’s enormous sorrow — was a fight with the town of Surfside, the beachfront enclave where she and her cousins spent some of their happiest childhood days.
Their fight is over the inevitable question that follows a tragedy that killed 98 people: What should be done with a place where such horror occurred? But unlike in other disasters, the land in Surfside is worth tens of millions of dollars and crucial to some survivors’ financial future.
