Waterfront condo building in Tequesta deemed ‘unsafe,’ evacuated. What happened?

TEQUESTA — Residents of 24 waterfront condominiums along Tequesta‘s waterfront have had to live in temporary quarters for the past three weeks after the village’s fire chief discovered cracks in the building’s columns and ordered them to evacuate.

The village disclosed Wednesday that Fire Chief James Trube found “significant deterioration” at Tequesta Cove, a three-story building constructed in 1985 that overlooks the Intracoastal Waterway.

An engineer working on a nearby project first noticed the issues with the building’s safety, according to the village. Tequesta Cove’s homeowners’ association then scheduled a building inspection, the village said.

Residents had seven hours to evacuate

Residents learned by email March 23 – one day shy of nine months since the fatal Surfside condominium collapse near Miami Beach – that they had seven hours to leave their apartments.

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“I happened to be at work and we got an email that we had to be out by 6:30 p.m. that evening,” Dr. Michael Wolford, an emergency room physician who owns a condominium on the first floor of the building, said Thursday. “My son was at home and called to tell me everyone was packing up and he didn’t know why.”

Wolford rushed home from the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in West Palm Beach and threw clothes, documents and other essentials into a suitcase.

Condo residents will not be able to return to the building until crews complete necessary repairs and the buildings are inspected by a structural engineer. Wolford said his homeowners’ association estimates the repairs will be done in early May.

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For now, the building, just east of U.S. 1 and Tequesta Drive, has been fenced off and is inaccessible to anyone except inspectors and work crews.

Unlike neighboring Broward and Miami-Dade counties, Palm Beach County does not have a building recertification program, although county leaders considered one over the summer before deciding to wait and take direction from the state.

Calls to change the county’s policy resurfaced last summer after the Champlain Towers South collapse killed 98 people in Surfside on June 24. The 12-story building was built in 1981, four years before Tequesta Cove.

Management company quiet on next steps

Public records show the 24 condos are owned mostly by private seasonal and permanent residents. At least two are owned by companies, one based in West Palm Beach.

The property is managed by Jupiter Management, a company based off U.S. 1 just north of the Loxahatchee River.

Contacted Thursday about the evacuation, a company representative said, “the board of directors isn’t addressing this with any social media or news outlets,” before hanging up the phone.

According to the village, Tequesta Cove’s homeowners’ association has contracted a firm to stabilize the building and repair the columns that support it.

Wolford, who has owned his condo since 2017, said water from the Intracoastal runs under his patio at high tide. He and other residents were first notified of the damaged piers under the building six months ago.

“We’ve been told it’s repairable,” he said. “The individual units have no damage. It’s the pillars that hold up the north end of the complex.”

Photos provided by Mathers Engineering to residents and the village show large cracks in concrete supports underneath the building. Erosion around the base of the supports has revealed more than a foot of the pole that is intended to be underground.

Because the damage to the building is on the waterfront and near mangroves, the Florida Department of Environmental Protection is required to issue a permit for the project. The village’s building permit is dependent on the state environmental permit.

Meanwhile, residents at Tequesta Cove are staying with friends and family in the area.

“While it is unfortunate that residents are being displaced and relocated, we are extremely grateful to the quick response of our building, fire, and Police Departments. Our main priority is to ensure the safety of our residents,” village Mayor Molly Young said in a news release of the evacuation.

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This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Tequesta condo building evacuated after fire chief deemed it unsafe