Construction on Ken Griffin’s $2.5 billion Citadel headquarters on Brickell Bay Drive has resumed, following a drill-rig collapse that injured four people last month.
Miami-Dade County lifted a stop-work order on the 52-story office tower after reviewing a revised safety plan submitted by Citadel’s contractor Keller North America, the Miami Herald reported.
The contractor was performing pre-construction soil work at 1201 Brickell Bay Drive when the rig fell onto morning traffic on Sept. 14, crushing several cars and sending four people, including a driver and three construction workers, to the hospital with minor injuries.
Sergio Ascunce, deputy building official with Miami-Dade County, told the outlet he thinks the rig fell because it was moved in wet weather on soggy, unstable ground.
Keller’s revised safety plan includes the use of crane mats that can help distribute the weight of machines, as well as spotters who can monitor equipment as it’s moved, the outlet said. Other safety measures include using flaggers for when equipment is moved near trafficked areas and informing nearby residents of site work happening near them.
It’s unclear whether the measures in the revised plan were in place before the accident, the publication said.
The Miami-Dade County Department of Regulatory and Economic Resources approved the safety plan Oct. 7.
An investigation by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration remains open. That federal agency has returned the damaged equipment to Keller, according to Ascunce.
On Wednesday, the Citadel project received an unrelated code violation from the city, which said the contractor needed to implement dust control measures. Keller expects to resolve the issue soon without disruption to the resumed construction, the newspaper said.
The Citadel skyscraper will sit on a 2.5-acre site that Griffin bought for $363 million in 2022, when he moved Citadel’s global headquarters from Chicago to Miami. While waiting for its permanent headquarters, the hedge fund giant has operated out of temporary spaces, including 830 Brickell Plaza and Southeast Financial Center at 200 South Biscayne Boulevard.
—Grace McClung
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