Miami-Dade District Court closed due to ‘safety concerns’ after apartment collapse

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Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniela Levine Cava said in a joint statement with other officials that courthouse staff were directed to work from home after the engineer’s report — prompted by the collapse of the Champlain Towers South apartment — “identified safety concerns on various floors.”

The statement said the report “recommended that floors 16 and above be closed to employees while repairs were quickly completed.”

Officials said all court work will be done remotely from Monday, and anyone who schedules court proceedings will receive notifications with instructions for remote access.

The courthouse—a 28-story building located at 73 West Flagler Street in downtown Miami—was built between 1925 and 1928, according to documents from the Historic Preservation Office. It was designated a Local Historic Site in 1985, and four years later, it was added to the National Register of Historic Places.

As of Saturday morning, at least 86 people have been confirmed dead in the collapse of the South Champlain Towers, prompting a flurry of revisions to buildings across the area to ensure their structural integrity.

Mayor Levin Cava, speaking at a news conference Saturday morning at the site of the apartment collapse, said the county “has taken steps in light of what happened here to be very aggressive about pursuing safety in all of these buildings.”

As for the court, we know there are problems in this building, she said. “Some structural concerns have been identified, some pillars that have to be – some support work that needs to be done.”

“This was known and the activities continued, but given the circumstances, we have already allowed the repair work to begin,” she added. “So we hope it can be done quickly and we can get back to normal operations in the courtroom.”

The mayor said the staff had been working remotely for the past year due to Covid-19, and had returned to the building about a week ago.

“So they have … everything they need to continue working remotely as well as in other locations,” the mayor said, adding that it should not disrupt the work of the court “significantly”.

CNN’s Diana Hackney and Melissa Alonso contributed to this report.

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