Developers Reckon With Building Against South Florida's Rising Tide

South Florida's coast may be among the most valuable real estate in the world, but as sea levels rise, developers are being forced to adapt — and some are considering how long they can continue building next to rising waters.

Amid the threat of increased flood risk, uneven local mandates and cuts to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and National Hurricane Center, developers are grappling with the challenges that come with building billion-dollar oceanfront projects.

“I think in the long term, you have to gauge whether or not really redeveloping waterfront in these areas that are at risk is worthwhile,” Savanna Managing Partner Chris Schlank said last week at Bisnow’s Waterfront Development Forum.

New York-based Savanna is building a luxury condo and apartment development named Olara in West Palm Beach on the Lake Worth Lagoon. It landed a $380M construction loan for the building in March.

Separated by North Flagler Drive, Schlank feels the property is relatively protected, with minimal investment in vulnerable features — unlike the luxury property's private dock that is situated across the street.

Schlank said onstage at the Mayfair House Hotel in Coconut Grove that the value proposition for building on the waterfront still seems obvious in the short term, but the increased frequency of catastrophic storms is giving him pause.

“Is it going to be exponential? Is it going to be a constant flood rise?” he said. “We don't know.”

NOAA, the federal agency responsible for tracking U.S. weather events, announced it will stop reporting on billion-dollar disasters, which could make it harder for industries to assess the cost and frequency of severe storms.

But the lack of access to NOAA’s data doesn’t stop Atlantic Ocean temperatures from rising to historic highs and continuing to climb, driving more frequent and intense hurricanes.

The oceans are also rising — NASA found that sea levels rose last year by more than they had originally predicted by 0.06 inches, the Miami Herald reported. Sea levels are expected to rise another 2 feet by 2060. But Miami, which only sits roughly 3 feet above sea level, could potentially reach it sooner.

Danilo Nanni, principal of DeSimone Consulting Engineering in Miami, said his team, which worked on MSC Cruise Terminal in PortMiami, planned for rising sea levels.

They designed the terminal for up to 3 feet of sea level rise, designing the structure to function under multiple elevation scenarios, including higher garage floors and flexible infrastructure that could be adapted over time.

“You can mitigate the cost because you're trying to design so that it works with the sea level rise,” Nanni said.

But adapting isn’t always as straightforward, as shifting mandates and a lack of cohesive regulations complicate the process, panelists said.

Some of the most significant changes in building standards in the last five years were seawall building codes, Bay Harbor-based Taubco Realty Co. principal Laura Tauber said.

Miami Beach launched a Seawall Prioritization Plan in 2021 that identified 66 seawalls and three living shorelines that required attention. Because 91% of its seawalls are on private property, the city strengthened the policy to require all new seawalls to be constructed to an elevation of 5.7 feet above the standard sea level baseline. It also required failing seawalls to be rebuilt to that same standard.

Building materials for properties also have to meet stricter base flood elevation requirements, Tauber said. But it isn’t a smooth sailing process with the municipalities.

Jorge Garcia, CEO of architectural firm Garciastromberg, worked on a seawall project where regulators insisted on a new elevation standard, regardless of the site’s existing conditions.

When his team created a 3D model, it revealed that building the seawall to the mandated height would trap water during storms, effectively turning the site into a “13-acre bathtub” and flooding the buildings it was meant to protect.

“The constant lack of a cohesive approach to the regulatory situation — not only are the regulations difficult, complicated and different, the incompetency in the work of interpretation by the municipalities is so aggravating,” Garcia said.

Tavistock Development Co. Senior Vice President Chris Gandolfo recalled having trouble with the Federal Emergency Management Agency on his company's redevelopment of Pier Sixty-Six in Fort Lauderdale and its flood barrier.

The developers had planned a 6-foot elevation for the 13K SF mixed-use development at 2301 SE 17th St., but by the time they had completed the designs, FEMA changed its requirement to 7 feet.

The solution was to prepare for ever-changing circumstances and develop a wall that could be brought up to the existing grade as requirements change, Gandolfo said.

“It's not easy,” Gandolfo said. “It takes a lot of collaboration with the agencies, both local, state, federal, and with their design teams to make all of this happen.”

For some, the challenge is welcomed.

Because of the resilience built into Miami’s newer buildings, climate change and rising insurance premiums tend to fall lower on developers’ list of immediate concerns, Related Ross Executive Vice President Bryan Cho said.

“They really sort of established standards for our high velocity hurricane zones, have made new construction so superior to legacy construction,” Cho said. “Quite frankly, these are the strongest and most resilient buildings in the world that we're creating today, and every three years, those standards go higher and higher and higher.”