The Board understands that there are a lot of questions and concerns regarding the Beach Cabana Construction process.
David Deitz, Architect, D3G Architects, Joe Allen, JM Allen Construction and Ellie Torres, Excel Customer Builders, all attended the November 11th Board Meeting; as well as, your Voting Members and Alternate Voting Members.
Mr. Deitz explained that the City of North Myrtle Beach had changed its building permit process. He stated during the meeting that if we had known the process had changed, the demolition of the Beach Cabana would have been completed at a later date. We demolished the Cabana with the plan that we would have all permits within 3-4 weeks after submitting for approval. When the Cabana was demolished the plan was to start driving piles immediately after the demolition took place. He also stated, in his opinion, the press release from the City of North Myrtle Beach was true; however, did not contain important information and dates.
The nine and half month construction time frame allows for weather delays. The concrete blocks cannot be laid if the temperatures are 35 degrees and below. The piling installation date is subcontracted to a large Myrtle Beach development company that unfortunately scheduled other projects prior to the Beach Cabana, due to the delay in receiving the permits. The Board of Directors will be monitoring this construction process with the contractors to see where or if we can remove other delays in order to speed up the process as it is being built. We will announce those as the construction process moves forward.
It is understood that there are many questions relative to demolishing the Beach Cabana rather than simply performing repairs to the building. As you may recall, there were six Town Hall Meetings held in December 2018 to discuss these issues which included constant repairs to the deck, pipe repair/replacement, repairs to the lift, painting, railing repair, etc. A detailed structural survey concluded that the Cabana was not built to current codes and therefore major repairs would require that the entire structure be compliant with current codes.
Many owners have asked why fees are being collected for the Beach Cabana when the Cabana no longer stands. It was not known upon adoption of the 2020 Beach Cabana Budget that the construction would be delayed an additional three months. The 2020 Beach Cabana Operating Budget was adopted at the cost of $4.00 per door/per month. At the November Board Meeting, the Board informed the Voting Members and Alternate Voting Members that the Beach Cabana property still incurred costs such as taxes, insurance, utilities, an actual elevator rather than a lift, cabana staff, additional furniture, and cleaning equipment.