Pool repairs at Icon Brickell to cost $14.4M, with unit owners footing most of the bill

The Icon Brickell pool deck

It looks like condo owners at Icon Brickell are back in deep water because of their troubled pool deck.

A letter from the project's master association said the condo complex's pool repairs will cost $14.4 million, and unit owners are the ones footing most of the bill.

In January, reports began surfacing of trouble at the $1 billion project's massive 2-acre pool deck. Its tiles were too slippery when wet, the pool's piping was faulty and it was leaking into the garage below. The master association decided enough was enough and said it would close the pool for about 14 months once repairs began, leaving residents of Icon Brickell's nearly 1,800 units without a place to sun their backs or find refuge from the Miami heat.

Not only would the pool get fixed, but the master association plans on replacing all the landscaping and converting the small reflection pool into one for kids. The landscaping alone would cost more than $700,000 including architect fees, though the kiddie pool conversion comes in at a much cheaper cost of $8,600.

Now it's been revealed just how much the undertaking is going to cost for the owners themselves. Documents uploaded Wednesday by realtor blog Miami Condo Investments give an exact breakdown of how much owners owe based off their unit types. It's calculated in the same way maintenance fees are, which is based off of percent ownership in the project by square footage.

Many owners would owe several thousand dollars, while others would shell out upwards of $10,000 for penthouses - split up through eight quarterly installments beginning in October.

A section of the breakdown also indicates the newly named W Hotel - which shares the pool - would also chip in more than $1 million to the repairs.

The so-called “special assessment” isn't final: the association's board of directors will take it to a vote on Tuesday.

Icon Brickell was built during the last real estate cycle by the Related Group, though the developer turned over two of the project's three towers to lender HSBC as part of a settlement to cover Related's outstanding $351 million loan.

Check out the breakdown here. - Sean Stewart-Muniz