Some Champlain Towers condo board members quit in 2019 over sluggish building repairs, Washington Post reports

By Theresa Waldrop and Joe Sutton, CNN

Five members of the Champlain Towers South condo association’s seven-member board — including its president, Anette Goldstein — decided to resign in the fall of 2019, when the association was debating multimillion-dollar repairs, the Washington Post reported, citing board meeting minutes and Goldstein’s resignation letter.

The majority of the Champlain Towers South board decided to quit following disputes over the lackluster response in tackling the repairs needed in the condominium complex, the paper reported.

“We work for months to go in one direction and at the very last minute objections are raised that should have been discussed and resolved right in the beginning,” Goldstein wrote in her September 2019 resignation letter, obtained by the Post.

The resignations took place about 11 months after the structural field survey report, which detailed “extensive and necessary repairs,” according to the firm that performed the survey, Morabito Consultants. The survey report raised concerns about structural damage to the concrete slab below the pool deck and “cracking and spalling” located in the parking garage.

Goldstein’s letter appears to indicate growing frustration in trying to resolve the issue and pay for the repairs, which were estimated to be about $9 million in 2018.

“This pattern has repeated itself over and over, ego battles, undermining the roles of fellow board members, circulation of gossip and mistruths,” Goldstein wrote. “I am not presenting a very pretty picture of the functioning of our board and many before us, but it describes a board that works very hard but cannot for the reasons above accomplish the goals we set out to accomplish.”

Goldstein and the other board members who resigned did not return messages seeking comment, according to the Post.

The reasons for the resignations of the other four members were not clear in the documents that the Post reviewed.

Goldstein and some of the others would later return to the board — one of the members just three weeks after stepping down — documents indicate, according to the Post.

“Efforts to reach virtually everyone who has served on the board since 2018 were unsuccessful; at least two of those members have been reported missing,” the paper said.

The New York Times also spoke to a former board member who elaborated on the departure of board members.

“People were quitting, and there were new people, and there was all kinds of stuff that was going on that was not pleasant,” Max Friedman, a former member of the board, told the Times. “I guess part of it was because of the project. There might have been personalities involved. There was all kinds of ugly stuff.”

The estimated cost for repairs had grown to about $15 million by the time the work was approved by the board in 2021, according to an assessment letter obtained by CNN. Those costs would be paid by the residents.

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