HOLMES BEACH – Just hours before the 12-story Champlain Towers South condo collapsed on June 24, former Holmes Beach Building Official Jim McGuinness inspected it.
The next day, he told the town commission that he saw nothing that would indicate the building would soon collapse.
McGuinness, who resigned from the city of Holmes Beach in 2019, is now the building official for the town of Surfside, and was the last person to inspect the building before its collapse.
He was on the roof of the doomed tower 14 hours prior to the building’s collapse to inspect the installation of anchors installed to allow window washers to safely lower themselves over the side of the residential condominium building. In addition to the recently installed anchors, McGuinness said other work was being done on the roof, but had been delayed due to ongoing rainfall in the area.
The building owners’ association, McGuinness said, was in the process of conducting the required inspections and tests for its 40-year recertification, due before the end of the calendar year. Though he said he had not received any of the required paperwork for recertification prior to the disaster at the Collins Avenue property, McGuinness told Surfside town commissioners that he believed the required inspections were largely complete.
To qualify for recertification, the building’s owners or association must complete all required inspections with a third-party firm, present them to the city’s building department for review and complete any required repairs before obtaining the certification for the building. Though the recertification program in Surfside is mandated by Miami-Dade County regulations, it’s up to the town’s building department to oversee the recertification process for buildings in their jurisdiction.
In a July 3 story, Fox News reported that the manager of the Champlain Towers condominium association complained by email on June 21 that the Surfside building department was stalling needed repairs at the tower, with McGuinness failing to respond to a May email concerning a parking plan for construction to repair the concrete slab underneath the pool deck. McGuinness responded to the email just hours before the building partially collapsed, according to the report. Engineering experts working with the Miami Herald stated that after review of photos and video of the building collapse the partial collapse could be due to the pool deck failing, falling into the garage below and pulling part of the building down with it.
An investigation into the tower’s June 24 partial collapse is ongoing along with an around-the-clock search for those still missing in the disaster. Ahead of Hurricane Elsa, the remaining portion of the Champlain Towers South building was imploded to keep the site as safe as possible for rescue workers and help them access previously unstable areas to search for the missing. As of July 9, 78 people were confirmed dead in the collapse and 68 were still reported as missing in the Surfside disaster.
Surfside Mayor Charles Burkett said an outside engineering firm is investigating the wreckage of the south tower along with its sister buildings to make sure those are still safe for residents and workers to occupy.
Investigations into the collapse also are being conducted by the U. S. Department of Commerce’s National Institute of Standards and Technology to determine what caused the partial collapse of the structure and what can be done to prevent similar tragedies in the future.
The Sun reached out to the city of Surfside’s building department and McGuinness for more information on recent inspections at Champlain Towers South, however, no response to emails, phone calls and text messages was received.
Prior to taking the building official position in Surfside, McGuinness worked for the city of Holmes Beach from March 23, 2015 until March 18, 2019 when he officially handed in his letter of resignation to Mayor Judy Titsworth. At the time of his resignation, McGuinness was being disciplined by the mayor.
In a discussion with The Sun, Titsworth said that while she could not speak to the circumstances surrounding McGuinness’s departure from the city, she would not consider hiring him back if given the opportunity. While she said McGuinness has a good understanding of the Florida Building Code, Titsworth added she was not happy with his performance and that personality conflicts caused a problem.
“It just wasn’t a good fit,” she said.
More recently on Anna Maria Island, McGuinness made headlines for his erroneous approval of a lighted sign and LED board at the Anna Maria Beach Resort on Gulf Drive prior to his departure from the city. His issuance of a permit for the backlit sign and message board against the city’s codes prohibiting backlit signs in residential neighborhoods has resulted in a lawsuit against the city from the resort’s owners and months of city commission discussion related to changes to the Holmes Beach sign ordinance to somehow accommodate existing backlit signs in residential areas. An update to the ordinance has not yet been approved by commissioners. The case in Manatee County Circuit Court is still pending.
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