Florida, the Land of Gleaming Condos, Frets After Collapse

The high-rise condos along the Miami seashore long embodied the Florida dream of sunshine and prosperity. But the Champlain Towers South catastrophe is obscuring that vision.

SURFSIDE, Fla. — Modern Florida was built on condos like Champlain Towers South. “A new lifestyle is evolving in Florida and with it, a new habitat, the condominium,” Florida Trend magazine declared in 1970, when it first used the word. Condos promised an entrée to the Florida dream of sunshine and fresh starts, affordable because it could be shared with a few hundred neighbors. A condo craze boomed in the 1970s, and Florida, decades after the advent of air-conditioning, insect repellent and swamp dredging, was on its way to becoming the third-most populous state, a frontier land for builders and investors and a powerful lure for people seeking the ultimate Florida reward: life on the beach.