Palm Bay Towers residents at war over windows [South Florida]

Palm Bay Towers residents at war over windows [South Florida]

Shortly before the Christmas holidays, residents of Miami’s landmark Palm Bay Towers condo — a bastion of privilege where the monthly maintenance fee exceeds most folks’ mortgage payment — found a letter taped to their doors outlining what one unit owner later called “extremely unpleasant” news:

The city had condemned the building. Water and power would be cut Jan. 3, and the building would be torn down.

“I never had such a fright in my life,” said classical music impresaria Judy Drucker, whose Palm Bay living room holds a Steinway grand concert piano at which stars like Plácido Domingo and Pinchas Zukerman have performed and rehearsed.

The building hasn’t been shut down, though it took an emergency court order and the unusual intervention of the City Commission to override, temporarily, the actions of its own chief building official, who declared the ultra-posh tower unsafe under a law typically used to condemn blighted properties.