Florida Developer Moves To Sue Miami Residents After Forced Repairs in Condo Takeover Battle
Julie Taylor
Thu, February 12, 2026 at 8:09 PM UTC
6 min read
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A Florida developer, forced to make millions of dollars in repairs to a Miami condo building, has filed a lawsuit against its residents.
Last month, a Florida state court judge ordered a developer to restore a Miami waterfront condominium, Biscayne 21, to a habitable condition after it was gutted during a yearslong legal fight.
If the developer's lawsuit prevails, the company could avoid the costly repairs and move forward with plans to demolish the Edgewater tower and replace it with luxury condos.
The new lawsuit
TRD Biscayne LLC, a subsidiary of Florida-based developer Two Roads Development, filed a new lawsuit in Miami-Dade Circuit Court on Jan. 30.
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In its complaint, the company is asking a judge to dissolve the building’s condominium association, arguing that repairing the property is no longer financially feasible.
According to the complaint, the cost to return the building to a habitable condition is about $61 million.
TRD Biscayne owns 183 of the building’s 192 units. The remaining units are held by residents who have refused to sell.
If the court grants the requested termination, those holdout owners could be forced to accept the developer’s buyout offer.
The company is seeking what Florida law calls an “economic termination,” a legal mechanism that permits the dissolution of a condominium association when a building has sustained significant damage and restoration no longer makes economic sense.
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In a statement to Realtor.com®, Two Roads Development managing partner Taylor Collins said, “We continue to comply fully with all court directives and to follow the governing documents. The equitable termination petition asks the court to address the current condition of a building that has suffered from decades of deferred maintenance and systemic infrastructure failure. Independent assessments have demonstrated that restoration would require extraordinary investment well beyond the value of the structure itself. We believe the equitable process allows the court to reach a fair and realistic resolution.”
Meanwhile, the Miami Herald reports that residents of Biscayne 21 filed a separate amended complaint earlier this week, seeking at least $100 million in damages from banks that financed the project, companies tied to the developer, and individuals involved in the attempted takeover.
Details of the previous ruling
In a Jan. 12 order, Miami-Dade Judge Thomas Rebull sided with eight residents who sued to block the sale of the Biscayne 21 condo building, directing the defendants—Two Roads Development and its affiliated entities—to restore the apartment tower and the plaintiffs' units "to the condition they were in at the time the complaint was filed in May 2023," according to a court filing obtained by Realtor.com.
After the January ruling, attorney Glen H. Waldman, with the law firm Armstrong Teasdale, who represents the holdout condo owners, told Realtor.com that engineers who had recently assessed the building found that the structure remains sound and can be restored, but it was expected to cost the developer a "substantial" sum.
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"But they should never have gone ahead and got over their skis like they did before they had absolute certainty that they had a right to do what they did," said Waldman.
Besides fully rehabilitating the building to make it livable again and restoring plumbing and electrical wiring to allow utility services to resume—all at Two Roads' expense without any financial contribution from the residents—the developer was barred from terminating the condominium, or seeking any zoning approval or demolition permits, according to the January ruling.
"The outside windows are gone, there is no air-conditioning system for the building. ... I mean, everything's gone," said Waldman. "It's a skeleton."
The judge's January order came three months after the Florida Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal filed by the developer, allowing a July 2025 ruling by the Third District Court of Appeal that sided with Biscayne 21's owners opposing the building's demolition to stand.
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Realtor.com reached out to attorney Susan Raffanello, who represents Two Roads Development, and the attorney for the condo residents for comment.
How the Biscayne 21 saga started
Built in 1964, the 13-floor, 192-unit Biscayne 21, located at 2121 North Bayshore Drive, features tennis courts, a pool, a barbecue area, parking, and most significantly, more than 830 feet of water frontage overlooking Biscayne Bay, the Port of Miami, and Miami Beach.
In 2022, Two Roads Development began purchasing units in the building with the goal of dissolving the condominium, demolishing the aging tower, and replacing it with a luxury apartment complex.
However, despite being pressured by the developer and real estate agents to sell, eight owners—Angelica Avila, Nicolas Bello, Maria Beatriz Gutierrez, Franah Vazir-Marino, Robert Murphy, George Garcia, Lazaro and Jacqueline S. Fraga, and Jeffrey and Shari Ulman—would not budge.
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Waldman previously told Realtor.com that his clients were reluctant to sell in part because the compensation Two Roads was offering them was below what they would have needed to buy comparable properties with waterfront views.
The developer's stumbling block was that Biscayne 21's condo rules, known as a declaration, required 100% of owners to approve the condo's termination—a threshold that could not be met because of the dissenters.
According to a lawsuit filed by Waldman on behalf of the holdouts in 2023, determined to go forward with the redevelopment project, Two Roads took over the condo board and illegally altered the language of the declaration, lowering the termination requirement from unanimous consent to 80% of owners.
A lower court initially sided with the developer, prompting it to begin stripping the building in preparation for demolition, even as Waldman filed an appeal with a higher court, which ultimately found in his clients’ favor.
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In a July 2025 opinion, the Third District Court of Appeal ruled that the trial court "erred" in failing to recognize that the developer violated the voting rights of unit owners who refused to sell.
"My clients never wanted to leave this building," Waldman previously told Realtor.com. "They had every intention of living the rest of their lives there. So when they were ceremoniously kicked out with really no basis at law to do it, obviously, it was terrible. It was decimating to them."
