The catastrophic images, a massive pile of rubble where an apartment building once stood, are seared into everyone’s memory.
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Five years later, we watched a father and son gazing at the site, and they told us it felt like the Champlain Towers had collapsed yesterday.
“Five years of fighting nonstop for a memorial,” said Martin Langesfeld.
He lost his sister and brother-in-law in the tragedy. Pablo Langesfeld lost his daughter, Nicole, and her husband. They have led the effort to establish a permanent memorial to the victims, but they say the Town of Surfside has cut the families out of the design process.
“And we already accepted the fact that the land is sold for development, that’s OK, but they gave us 88th Street for a memorial and even with that we can’t break ground, it’s constant delays,” Martin said.
“Everything in government takes a while,” Surfside Mayor Shlomo Danzinger said.
The mayor told us the memorial is in the county’s approval process.
“As soon as that’s done, we’re looking at hopefully July, August approval, sign the contract, and start getting shovels in the ground already,” Danzinger said.
When the building started coming down, Gabe Nir heard the sounds, realized something was drastically wrong, and yelled at his mom and sister to wake up and run. They barely escaped with their lives.
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“It’s very traumatic, even five years later, it’s still traumatic,” Nir said.
The emotions are still raw, as a new luxury condo project is about to rise at the site. It’s called The Delmore, with prices starting at $15 million, but so far, there have been no preconstruction units sold.
“I don’t know how anyone could even consider living there; it’s just unreal to even think about it,” Nir said.
“This is hallowed ground, 98 people were killed here, 136 units vanished overnight, what happened on that ground will never be forgotten, and it’s heavy, it’s very heavy energy,” Langesfeld added.
The Delmore developers have run into an insurance issue, which has delayed the groundbreaking of their project. Some of the victims’ families told us the delay feels like karma because the developer did not allow a permanent memorial to be built on the property. Instead, it will rise just to the north of the site.
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