Miami's $500M Faena Hotel Is Sinking — And Nobody Knows How to Stop It

On the sand at 32nd Street in Miami Beach stands a ten-foot woolly mammoth, every bone coated in 24-karat gold, sealed in glass to face the Atlantic forever. Behind it: the Faena Hotel, interiors by Baz Luhrmann, and Faena House next door, a Norman Foster tower where Ken Griffin once paid $60 million for the penthouse — the most anyone had ever paid for a home in Miami. The whole Faena District cost more than a billion dollars, and it was sold as a monument to glamour that would last forever. Then European radar satellites measured the coast down to the thickness of a fingernail. Along Miami Beach, out of roughly 110 buildings, almost none were moving — except two. One of them is the crown jewel of the Faena District. This is the story of why: the manufactured island pumped up from the bottom of a bay, the soft limestone and hidden sand that compress under every tower, the 2021 Surfside collapse that killed 98 people and rewrote Florida law, the beach at the mammoth's feet that has to be rebuilt by truck, and the December 2024 study that put Faena on front pages beside Trump and Porsche. A building can be perfectly safe today while the ground beneath it keeps moving — and nobody is required to watch it. 🦣 Should Miami Beach stop approving new towers until the ground under the old ones is understood — even if the skyline stops growing? Or did these owners get exactly what they paid for when they bought glamour on a barrier island? Let me know in the comments. ⚠️ Note: no building named here is known to be unsafe, and the study's authors did not claim any is in danger. This is a documentary about geology, money, and public satellite research. Subscribe for more investigations into luxury real estate colliding with physics and the ground itself. ⏱ CHAPTERS 00:00 The gold mammoth and the Cathedral 00:59 Ken Griffin's $60 million penthouse 01:56 Satellites caught 35 buildings sinking 02:59 Only 2 of 110 Miami Beach buildings moved 03:36 Paying for permanence on a sandbar 04:02 The sand, the floods, and Surfside 05:41 Miami Beach was manufactured 06:37 The Saxony, Queen of Collins Avenue 07:38 Alan Faena builds the dream 08:35 What's under the Faena: a stone sponge 10:24 Your neighbor's foundation sinks you 11:09 The rising sea: fish in the street 12:40 Surfside: 98 lives 14:54 The study started at the building that fell 15:17 The war on the sand 16:51 32nd Street: where the Faena stands 18:05 The bill: the 40-year rule dies 19:31 Faena House: fewer than 50 owners exposed 20:10 Insurance and assessments, a storm surge 21:46 Three impossible choices 22:26 The next foundation is the threat 23:34 December 2024: the study goes public 24:18 Faena Hotel, or Faena House? 28:11 You can't negotiate with the sand 28:30 The story isn't finished