Litigation against the Palm Bay Yacht Club’s $46 million assessment is well underway, with final testimonies, closing arguments and a judge’s ruling expected within the next week or so.
The Biscayne Times’ February 2023 cover story broke news on allegations of fraud and secrecy made by the residents of the 27-story building against its condo association. In the month that followed, multiple unit owners have come forward with similar stories of corruption at condo buildings right next door.
(Marinas.com)
Palm Bay Yacht Club, Palm Bay Condominium and Palm Bay Towers are seen here side-by-side, while a marina now in disrepair stands in between.
Palm Bay Towers, built in 1972 and located at 720 NE 69th St., is due for its 50-year recertification. As a result, residents are currently being forced to cover the costs of a $21.5 million assessment that they believe is overwhelmingly exaggerated and unnecessary. That amount translates to a price tag of anywhere from $221,450 to $337,550 per unit owner – even more than what residents at Palm Bay Yacht Club are in the midst of protesting.
Owners at Palm Bay Towers filed a lawsuit against their association in 2021, along with residents of the neighboring Palm Bay Condominium experiencing similar issues. With little progress made during the court proceedings, Towers’ residents have meanwhile been forced to begin coughing up their shares of the debt.
Connecting the Dots
(Marinas.com)
Palm Bay Yacht Club, Palm Bay Condominium and Palm Bay Towers are all experiencing inflated assessments by their condo associations.
In each scenario the suspected conspiracy is roughly the same: condo association boards made up of developers and self-dealers who many residents accuse of looking to decrease property values and inflate repair costs for their own biddings. Indeed, many residents have already been forced to sell their units at a loss of their potential value.
Just as at Palm Bay Yacht Club, desperate owners at Palm Bay Towers hired an independent engineer to secure their own assessment.
(Milena Malaver for Biscayne Times)
The residents of Palm Bay Yacht Club are soon expecting a judge’s ruling on their lawsuit against their condo association.
Charles Culpepper Jr. was a leading engineer for the Towers’ 40-year recertification who successfully replaced the structure’s windows for less than $3 million, despite an $11 million assessment made by the association’s engineers in 2010. On the residents’ collective dime, Culpepper prepared another report for the building’s 50-year recertification in 2021 that deemed the building to be structurally sound. In essence, he gave them a $0 assessment.
That said, Culpepper did make recommendations for additional repairs that should be addressed regardless of its recertification status. Even then, Culpepper’s estimates were far below those of the association’s partnering company, DSS Engineering.
(Samantha Morell for Biscayne Times)
The residents at Palm Bay Yacht Club and expert witnesses after a first full-day court hearing Feb. 13.
In a letter dated Dec. 2, 2021, Culpepper assured unit owners that he could repair the building’s spalling damage for less than $3 million. The board of directors had put that cost at $15.5 million.
“[The association] went ahead and opened up all this spalling to make our building look as bad as it could so that they could induce everybody into this huge assessment,” said Thomas Marrazza, a 10-year unit owner at Palm Bay Towers who is currently running for election to the condo's board. “It’s all a setup.”
The high assessment was further justified by the association by the notion that the building must be brought up to code, the validity of which Marrazza and similarly dissenting unit owners continue to deny. According to city of Miami guidelines, older buildings are grandfathered into the codes that were in place at the time of their construction.
(Courtesy of Annabella Bucheli)
This marina is shared by the owners of Palm Bay Towers and Palm Bay Condominiums and has been a source of revenue since the 1960s.
“It’s all under the guise of the recertification,” said Timothy Hogle, a former condo association board member and nearly 30-year unit owner at Palm Bay Towers. “However they’re doing things way out of the scope of recertification to jack up the price as much as possible.”
The goings on at Palm Bay Towers run far deeper than its 50-year recertification. The building’s members have a decadelong history of infighting that Hogle says began when a small group of developers moved into the building around 2015. They quickly got elected to the board and successfully ran a campaign in 2017 to recall Hogle, who spearheaded the cheaper window assessment just seven years prior.
What has transpired since then is a series of what Hogle, Marrazza and others refer to as personal vendetta lawsuits by the association against outspoken residents. Now with the most recent complaint filed in 2021, stalled progress in court means there’s no ending in sight for struggling unit owners.
(Courtesy of Annabella Bucheli)
= The marina at Palm Bay Towers and Palm Bay Condominiums has remained in disrepair since 2019.
Although both Hogle and Marrazza have to take on the higher end of assessment fees, neither one will end up on the streets if their litigation does not prevail. Marrazza is “standing up to the man” from a home in the Bahamas, while Hogle would be forced to sell just one of his three units at the Towers if assessment costs continue to be demanded, but the two are taking on the burden of justice for their neighbors as well.
“We’re going to keep suing and we do think we are going to prevail, but unfortunately there’s no other choice [but to pay in the meantime],” said Marrazza.
Repeated calls to the Biscayne Towers association went unanswered by press time.
(Courtesy of Annabella Bucheli)
The marina at Palm Bay Towers and Palm Bay Condominiums has remained in disrepair since 2019.
A Marina in Shambles
Joining the plaintiffs in that lawsuit are residents from the third building, Palm Bay Condominium, located at 770 NE 69th St. Palm Bay Condominium and Palm Bay Towers share common areas and a marina that has been in disrepair for more than four years now, due to the alleged neglect of their condo associations and property managers.
“These current board members did not vote to repair that marina; they’ve allowed it to collapse into the bay and destroy our property values even more and also lose a huge source of income for us all, but this is part of driving the value down in our building, and now these same board members have been picking off units and buying them, gaining more power and buying units for the cheap,” said Marrazza.
(Courtesy of Annabella Bucheli)
The marina at Palm Bay Towers and Palm Bay Condominiums has remained in disrepair since 2019.
The marina had been a source of income for residents since 1960, but was placed under a notice of demolition by the city in 2019. Repairs have not been made since then, although monthly maintenance fees have increased at both buildings to make up for the loss of revenue.
Palm Bay Condominium is the oldest building, constructed in 1965, and does not currently face a necessary recertification. It is, however, continuously plagued by the recurring issues of disrepair, neglect and inflated assessments, although its board secretary Andrew Sherry disputed that it has been plagued with assessments in a letter to our editor on March 6.
Incidentally, Palm Bay Condominium was managed until January by AKAM Living Services Inc., the same company that the Palm Bay Yacht Club condominium association hired to manage its building in 2020. The property management company is a defendant in the pending litigation with the Yacht Club, and a key player at the center of unraveling suspicions by residents of both buildings. Sherry further noted that AKAM Living Services was recently replaced in January after two years.
Mounting Evidence
At press time, Judge Thomas Rebull had presided over the Palm Bay Yacht Club lawsuit over the course of four full-day hearings. Further evidence has since been provided to the Biscayne Times by the plaintiffs that reveal some of their assessed costs had been inflated by more than 1,800%, according to independent engineers.
(Courtesy of Annabella Bucheli)
The marina at Palm Bay Towers and Palm Bay Condominiums has remained in disrepair since 2019.
Residents with their own architectural backgrounds have continued to calculate and investigate remaining errors, one of whom found that the quoted amounts for balcony railings is enough to accommodate an additional 11 stories. Further, independent estimates have placed the cost for hurricane impact windows at $28,000 – a far cry from those made by the association’s engineers at $60,000 to $72,000.
The residents of Palm Bay Yacht Club have also discovered that Doug Weinstein, the individual in charge of the building’s 40-year recertification process as part of a company named Project Management Group, is also a shareholder with AKAM Living Services Inc.
(Courtesy of Annabella Bucheli)
The marina at Palm Bay Towers and Palm Bay Condominiums has remained in disrepair since 2019.
Mysterious relationships are the cherry on top for residents who are already litigating against unpermitted work and misappropriation of funds by their association. The condo owners maintain that the board has failed to disclose the proper documents to justify its dealings.
In the meantime, residents told the Biscayne Times that they have received a series of calls and outcries from owners throughout Florida facing similar issues. In an email from “PBYCC Owners,” the plaintiffs cautioned against a statewide epidemic of “dishonest management companies” charging unsuspecting owners large amounts under the guise of recertification, using preferred engineering and construction companies to do their bidding.
“These extremely expensive construction projects only benefit the management companies and their preferred contractors, at the expense of owners who don’t have the knowledge of how to defend themselves,” reads the email.
Marrazza expressed a similar sentiment, warning against the unfortunate possibility that these same management companies would use the Champlain Towers South tragedy in their fear-mongering tactics.
This story was updated from the original on March 7, 2023