The 21-story, 322-unit Renaissance Tower located oceanfront in Surfside, S.C. remains abandoned and evacuated by mandate.
A class action lawsuit filed on October 13th states those responsible for overseeing Myrtle Beach’s Renaissance Tower knew for years about steadily worsening damage to the structural steel making the high rise unsafe for occupancy.
The property is located oceanfront at the vacation destination known as Myrtle Beach Resort.
The high rise remains evacuated and unoccupied, by mandate from Horry County government. It is unclear if or when the property will be allowed to accommodate guests.
The lawsuit claims the below developers knew the now-evacuated 21-story high-rise condominium building was structurally unsound yet failed to make any further inspections or repairs and instead “allowed the damage to worsen.”
The lawsuit claims the high-rise’s steel has “steadily corroded and weakened”. The building is no longer structurally sound.
As MyrtleBeachSC News reported earlier this month, inspectors and Horry County officials demanded the evacuation of residents who, per the suit, now face a more than $2 million assessment for repairs among other yet-unknown costs.
The lawsuit points out that a former building manager for the Renaissance Tower stated to a resident, one of the plaintiffs, in or around 2016 that “the steel under the building was in bad shape and needed to be repaired or replaced.”
Instead of repairing the building’s structural steel, the defendants chose “to undertake expensive building improvement projects” that did not address any safety or structural problems, according to the lawsuit.
Work to sure up the foundation finally began this month. Contractors observed steel that was “so corroded and weakened” that an engineer was called in to further evaluate the conditions, the suit says. That engineer found that the Renaissance Tower building was “not structurally sound” given that some of the steel column flanges had “completely disintegrated.” Horry County government then stepped in and closed the high rise, requiring all occupants to leave immediately.
Some Renaissance Tower condo owners, meanwhile, had their units listed for sale and are now unable to sell them, or had a contract for the sale of their unit and had buyers back out, the lawsuit states.
The complaint says that “[d]espite being left homeless, stuck paying for temporary housing, or deprived of income from a tenant,” Renaissance Tower condo owners now face a more than $2 million assessment for repairs to the building’s structural steel, as well as an unknown additional assessment for temporary shoring to make the building safe for occupants, and costs for “the expanded scope of repairs needed to address the extremely damaged condition of the steel.”
According to the case, the Renaissance Tower managers have “less than $1.3 million” in reserves in 2022, which the suit claims is a “grossly unreasonable” amount for a 21-story, 322-unit condo on the beach in coastal South Carolina.
“Due to the lack of maintenance and repairs and the grossly insufficient reserves held by the Regime, the unit owners are being forced to pay substantial assessments for repairs to the building and the assessments continue to increase given the temporary shoring and expanded steel repairs now necessary at the building,” the suit states.
Class Action Liberty Property Holdings Sc Llc Et Al v Richardson Et Al by MyrtleBeachSC news on Scribd