The manager of Florida’s doomed condo tower had accused the town of Surfside of “holding up” urgently needed renovations and repairs at the building — just three days before its collapse, a new report says. 

The disturbing revelation surfaced as private engineers examined photos of the building rubble and said it appeared that the structure’s critical support columns lacked the level of steel reinforcement called for in its original design, another outlet said.

“There does not appear to be enough steel connecting the slab to the columns,” said Shankar Nair, a member of the National Academy of Engineering, to the New York Times. “What we see out there seems inconsistent with what the drawings show.” 

In terms of building manager Scott Stewart’s gripes to Surfside, on July 21, he complained that he still needed the town’s approval for a massive planned improvement project there to go ahead, according to e-mails obtained by the Miami Herald. 

“As we are out to bid on our project [we] need to get to answers to these questions,” Stewart wrote town building officials, the Miami Herald reported, citing e-mails it obtained between condo-board members and the town’s building department.

“This is holding us up and cost [sic] are going up and out [sic] 40 year is coming up fast,” he said, referring to the building’s needed 40-year recertification.

In another e-mail to the town that day, Stewart described $11 million in necessary urgent work planned for the building — including the removal of all its pool deck tile on “existing concrete surface” and the need to “repair damaged concrete.”

Stewart’s desperate e-mail came after Frank Morabito — an engineer hired by Champlain Towers in 2018 to conduct a survey of the structure — had met with town building officials about a month earlier, on May 13, to discuss the extensive renovation plans.

Morabito and condo-board members were finally having the meeting after more than a week of him sending unanswered e-mails, according to records cited by the Herald.

The engineer followed up with an e-mail to town planner Walter Keller a week after the meeting, requesting that the municipality approve plans to make the necessary space for the construction crews and equipment so the association could move forward with bidding the estimated $16 million repair job.

“It is [Champlain Tower South’s] desire to go out to bid for our 40-year recertification work ASAP and need the Town of Surfside input on this request so everyone has a clear understanding on how this project will be accomplished,” Morabito wrote, according to the Herald.

“As such, we respectfully request that we hear from the Town in the near future so we can make any necessary revisions to our contract drawings and submit same to the Town for permit review/approval,” he said.

In 2018, Champlain Towers had hired Morabito to assess the building, which was built in 1981, in preparation for its 40-year safety recertification.

The engineer prescribed millions of dollars in repairs, the most significant of which were to correct a “major error” to the pool deck and fix the damage it had caused to the underlying structural slab.

But an April letter from condo board President Jean Wodnicki warned the residents that the “observable damage such as in the garage” had gotten “significantly worse” since the 2018 inspection. 

Repairs needed to be made urgently, she wrote.

“The concrete deterioration is accelerating. The roof situation got much worse, so extensive roof repairs had to be incorporated,” she wrote in the April 9 letter.

Wodnicki added: “When you can visually see the concrete spalling [cracking], that means that the rebar holding it together is rusting and deteriorating beneath the surface.”

On June 23, just 14 hours before the structure crumbled, building department chief James McGuinness finally responded to Stewart and Morabito, saying he needed more information — including a site plan for the temporary lot, details about fencing and a description of how Champlain Towers would “prevent the site from becoming a dust bowl or a mud bowl,” the Herald reported.

The condo then collapsed in the early hours of June 24. As of Sunday, the death toll stood at 24, with 121 people still unaccounted for.

In a statement to the paper, Town Manager Andrew Hyatt insisted that the plans submitted by the condo association in May were marked “preliminary” and much of it appeared to be “outside the scope of any proposed 40-year re-certification work.”

“There was no indication during any communications between the Town and the association by telephone or electronic mail that this submission required emergency action by the Town of Surfside,” Hyatt told the Herald.

“The scope of work for repairs was not received until June 21, 2021, and not in the form of a building application. To date, no permit application for these specific repairs has been received by the Town,” he added.

Condo association reps did not respond to the Herald’s request for comment, nor did a rep for Morabito.

As for the Times report, Allyn Kilsheimer, a forensic engineering expert who examined the collapsed tower, agreed with some other engineers that the steel used to connect concrete slabs below the parking deck might have been less than what had been called for.

“The bars might not be arranged like the original drawings call for,” Kilsheimer said, cautioning that the investigation into the collapse has not concluded — and could take months.

The engineers pointed to damaged columns in a portion of the building that did not collapse, where the exposed slabs on one column showed only two pieces of rebar and another showed three — where the plans called for four, the Times said.