1ºYour missing the overall point, this is how it's done in America. Infrastructure repairs and modernization are presented as too expensive, not one wants to pay for them until the building or bridge collapses, the roads crumble, the water is poisoned (and that only get attention based on the neighborhood). Our communications and schools (again neighborhood) are antiquated. But there's no money, unless someone wants a new stadium, or something named after a senator. People and companies that use these resources are not paying taxes to repair and upgrade, and that seems to be just fine with 1/2 the people in the country.
2ºEvery story, has a beginning:
"Reiber (pronounced “Rye-ber,” according to acquaintances), who was born in Poland and moved to Canada at age two, had worked as a lawyer in Toronto before moving to Aventura, just north of Miami, in the 1970s.
In Canada, he and his partners had been charged with tax evasion for, among other things, skimming cash from laundry businesses, the Washington Post reported. (Fifteen years later, he pleaded guilty and paid a $60,000 fine.) In Florida, Reiber started buying and selling existing multifamily buildings, often with partners from Canada, and developing his own from scratch.
Florida corporation records show him associated with 31 companies.
“They were normal people in politics,” Mitchell Kinzer said of Reiber and his development partners. Kinzer is now 70 but was mayor of Surfside in his late 20s, when Reiber was active. “They wanted to build a building, make a profit.” (Reiber’s daughter, Jill Meland, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.)
In 1981, Reiber would complete Champlain Towers South, a 12-story condominium on the beachfront in Surfside, and soon after, a sister project, Champlain Towers North, just a block away. After a long lull, in 1994 he would finish his third and final building. Champlain Towers East lined up along the sand between the other two.
As the world now knows, Reiber’s first, southernmost building, at 8777 Collins Ave., collapsed in a horrible catastrophe June 24. Rescuers sift through rubble looking for more than 140 people still missing and residents of other Champlain buildings wonder if their homes are safe.
In the meantime, old news stories, public records and lawsuits offer context about how Reiber’s projects rose amid Miami’s notoriously wild property market, and possible clues about the collapse."
https://www.yahoo.com/new...-133711334.html