By DONALD WITTKOWSKI
An Ocean City condominium complex that was shut down last week by the city’s construction official amid safety concerns will remain closed until structural repairs are made.
For now, red tags have been slapped on the Seaspray condos at 34th Street and Bay Avenue declaring that the buildings are currently “unsafe for human occupancy.”
“No individual is to occupy this building until the structure is rendered safe and secure,” the red tags say.
City Solicitor Dorothy McCrosson said the Seaspray’s condo association has “been responsive” so far in making some repairs, but has not yet started to fix other structural problems that led to the complex being shut down for about a month in April 2023.
“They had promised to do some structural repairs about a year ago when we went through a similar situation. Those repairs have not been undertaken. So, until the repairs that had been promised have been substantially undertaken and we have a new updated engineering report indicating that the property is safe for habitation, unfortunately, the red tag is going to remain,” McCrosson said while giving an update on the condos during a City Council meeting Thursday.
The condos were shut down last week by the city’s construction official after some concrete fell from the landing of an exterior stairway on the north side of the Seaspray complex, McCrosson said in an interview after the meeting.
On Thursday, red tape was wrapped around the first and second levels of a stairway on the north side of the condos to prevent anyone from using it.
McCrosson said the condo association must submit an updated engineering report showing that the Seaspray is not in “imminent threat of collapse” before the city considers allowing the buildings to reopen.
“Our only concern is that it is safe,” she said in the interview.
She noted that an updated engineering report was also required by the city last year before the Seaspray was allowed to reopen.
“Our construction official was satisfied with the report he received and the promises that it would be remediated,” McCrosson said.
The 32-unit complex has been a fixture at the corner of 34th Street and Bay Avenue since the 1960s. It was converted from the Seaspray Motel into condos in 1980.
The Seaspray condos were first shut down in April 2023. At that time, the state Department of Community Affairs ordered the city to close down the complex after it was declared structurally unsafe. Then the condos reopened in May 2023 after an updated engineering report concluded they were safe.
An engineering report completed in April 2023 by Endicott Engineering found that structural defects and deteriorating conditions were so significant at Seaspray that they presented a safety hazard to both the condo residents and the general public.
Endicott Engineering also concluded that the condo complex should be demolished. Overall, at least six engineering studies have been done since 2000, each determining that the buildings were structurally unsound, according to a lawsuit filed in 2022 against the Seaspray’s managing board and condo association.
Litigation continues over whether repairs should be made to the buildings or whether it would be better to demolish the complex altogether and sell the property to a developer.
The Endicott report noted that structural problems were found as far back as 1980 by another engineering company that inspected the Seaspray complex at that time. Those problems were “sufficient enough for the developer at the time to have considered demolishing the buildings,” Endicott added.
“Historically, routine maintenance of the structures and surrounding grounds appears to have been non-existent. This has led to the accelerated deterioration of the concrete and steel in essential structural elements of the foundation and building superstructure. Essentially, the structure has aged poorly, and the overall condition of the structure is worse than similarly aged structures that have been properly maintained,” the report stated.
Among the defects found by Endicott in each of the buildings were numerous cracks, extensive settling of the foundation, advanced deterioration of the load-bearing beams and structural slabs and shifting of the bearing walls.
“There are numerous cracks on the surfaces of the existing precast hollow core concrete slabs. These cracks have never been sealed, resulting in the infiltration of water through the surface concrete and the corrosion of the steel rebar. The corroding rebar has expanded in size, resulting in additional cracking of the beams, which has further reduced the load bearing capacity of these elements,” the report found.
