The Club at Brickell Bay: When Short-Term Rentals Split a Condominium, the Board Becomes the Battleground

On July 16, 2026, the Miami Herald published an investigation of The Club at Brickell Bay, a 43-story, 643-unit condominium in Miami’s financial district where roughly 545 units operate as investor-owned vacation rentals and full-time homeowners and tenants have dwindled to about 15 percent of the building ¹. The Real Deal summarized the reporting the same day ². The story is about noise, parties and police calls, but for boards, managers and association counsel it is mostly a story about governance: who controls the board, what the documents allow, and which forum hears the fight.

What the reporting describes

According to the Herald, the five board officers who controlled the building are themselves short-term rental hosts and do not live there ¹. A former board president who runs six rentals in the tower told the paper the building “was built to be a short-term rental building,” and supporters point to bylaws that set no minimum leasing period ¹. The Real Deal reported his estimate that a single unit can earn as much as $50,000 a year ².

The legal picture is more complicated than the bylaws. The Herald reported that Miami’s zoning code bars stays of fewer than 30 days in multifamily residential buildings unless the building holds a condo-hotel Certificate of Use, and that the building’s 2007 certificate approves a “condo shell” with no reference to lodging ¹. City inspectors issued five citations for unlawful lodging, but they were dismissed without a code enforcement hearing after the listings were briefly taken down ¹.

Inside the building, residents who complained received cease-and-desist letters from the association’s attorney ¹. A June 22 board election was marked by allegations of forged ballots, and the longtime president lost his bid for a ninth term ¹. The new leadership has pledged a review of the association’s financial and voting records, and the board plans to fix code and health violations in the garage, pool area and laundry room and to explore obtaining a proper certificate for short-term rentals ¹. Separately, a property manager who previously worked for the building faces a pending criminal case for grand theft and organized fraud and has not yet gone to trial ¹².

The documents set the limits

Owners hoping to end the rentals by amending the declaration face a statutory limit. Under section 718.110(13), an amendment that prohibits renting, changes the duration of rental terms or limits how often units may be rented applies only to owners who consent to it and to owners who take title after it becomes effective ³. In a building where most units are rented, a new leasing amendment would bind few current investors even if it passed.

That leaves the existing documents, the city’s zoning rules and the board’s enforcement choices. Each of those is a different kind of dispute, and Florida law sends them to different places.

Which forum hears which fight

Section 718.1255 defines the condominium disputes that go to the state’s nonbinding arbitration program. The definition covers the board’s authority to require an owner to take, or not take, an action involving the owner’s unit, and a board’s failure to properly conduct elections, give adequate notice, properly conduct meetings or allow inspection of books and records ⁴. It excludes, among other things, the levy or collection of assessments, tenant evictions and claims of breach of fiduciary duty by directors ⁴.

Instead of arbitration, a party may submit an eligible condominium dispute to presuit mediation under section 720.311, but election and recall disputes are not eligible for mediation and must be arbitrated by the state division or filed in court ⁴. When mediation is used, the statute makes the proceedings privileged and confidential to the same extent as court-ordered mediation, and the mediator must be a Florida Supreme Court certified circuit civil mediator ⁵.

For a building like The Club, that sorting matters. The election allegations belong in arbitration or court ⁴. Rental enforcement, records access and meeting complaints can be negotiated, and with a new board in place there is room to do it. A mediated framework (registration, conduct rules, records production and a timetable for zoning compliance) can give full-time owners and investors terms that neither side would get from a code board or a judge.

Tony Roca is a Florida Supreme Court Certified Circuit Civil Mediator who mediates condominium and HOA disputes, including pre-suit mediation under section 720.311, by Zoom statewide. Boards, managers and counsel can book a mediation online.