Tenants file class-action suit against Meriel Marina Bay complex, management
Say buildings have mold, structural defects, and have been under constant repair. Development owner is suing the builder and designer. They say they aren’t responsible.
About three years after her husband died, Barbara Kelleher decided to sell the family home in Canton and downsize to an apartment at Meriel Marina Bay in Quincy.
Now that apartment has holes in it.
“They drill right through your walls,” Kelleher said, “and they don’t even blink an eye. The other night it was really cold out, and I asked what they were going to do with this hole in my wall. They just put a piece of wood on the outside.”
Kelleher moved into the complex at 550-552 Victory Road in June 2020. In November 2021, the development’s owner, Marina Bay Residences, LLC, filed a complaint in Norfolk County Superior Court against builder Callahan Inc. and architectural firm Cube 3 Studio LLC, alleging design and construction defects.
But Marina Bay had documented problems with the complex years before Kelleher moved in. The project was “substantially completed” in April 2018, but the next winter, there were water issues, according to the Superior Court filing. Callahan made repairs in late 2018 and early 2019, the suit alleges, but the work the builder did to address the issue “was also defective,” and “in the spring of 2019, interior leaks were discovered at numerous locations in both the North and South buildings. ”
Marina Bay alleges in the suit that an inspection Callahan itself performed in August 2019 uncovered “poorly adhered flashing material, soft or deteriorated OSB [oriented strand board], cracking of the air water barrier and other evidence of potentially wide-spread water intrusion.” It would send a notice to Marina Bay in February 2021 alleging design flaws.
But it’s not just the water-tightness of the building at issue. Marina Bay also says there is “microbial growth” in the complex and “structural deficiencies” with apartment balconies. Callahan and Cube 3 dispute that they are responsible for the problems and have sued several other parties, saying they are to blame.
“In July 2021, my balcony was shut down with no notice,” Kelleher said. “They just told me it was unsafe. They shut it down for a whole summer. They worked on it, and it was supposed to be fixed. Now they’re taking it apart again two years later. And also other areas of the whole building are getting taken apart, not just my balcony.”
But it wasn’t Callahan doing the repairs. According to Marina Bay, Callahan “abandoned the Project.” Marina Bay didn’t wait and brought in work crews.
When Sandra Fernandez was looking for a new place in the summer of 2018, she wanted somewhere she could stay for several years. Her young son was going to school in Squantum, and many of his friends lived at Marina Bay. She picked out a two-bedroom unit at Meriel Marina Bay and pays $3,610 a month for the apartment.
Soon her son, then 7, started getting rashes.
“He had rashes all over his body very often,” Fernandez said. ”He couldn’t sleep at night. He was extremely sick at night.”
Fernandez said she pushed the management company to open up the walls, and she saw mold. When air testing uncovered mold in her apartment and a blood test found it in her son’s blood, she said management told her she brought it in on her shoes. “You have to fight. They make you feel like you’re crazy for thinking you have mold and that you have no rights.”
“I still have mold in my apartment,” she said. “I actually found out that I have a lot of mold in my HVAC system. I have mold in my bathroom, my washing machine, everywhere.”
Immigration attorney Emily Amara Gordon said she wasn’t told about the damage when she moved into Meriel Marina Bay in July 2020. She found out about it by chance a year later. She took her dog out one morning and on her way back through the lobby, she noticed a man wearing a hard hat and a button-down shirt talking on the phone. She assumed he was involved in the repairs underway at that time.
“I overheard him on the phone. He was in open space,” at a table in the lobby, Gordon said. “My memory of what he said was, ‘After what happened in Miami, we need to move quickly.’ And right around that time, they started blocking off people’s balconies and doing repairs.”
Gordon said that given the timing, she presumed he was referring to the fatal collapse of the Champlain Towers South building in Surfside, Fla., near Miami, on June 24, 2021. She held several conversations with him after that, she said, and he mentioned that there was a pending lawsuit “by his boss.” Neither lawsuit alleges that the Meriel Marina Bay buildings are at risk of collapse.
Gordon looked in public court records for the lawsuit to which the man was referring. In it, she said, Marina Bay Residences claimed to have found “microbial growth” in the building. She inferred that the growth was mold, which she knew to be hazardous, so she brought the complaint to management. She didn’t want to renew her lease without having more information. Management said it would get back to her, but she would end up renewing for a year because she had nowhere else to go. Meanwhile, she was telling neighbors about the complaint, and suggested at a tenants meeting that they hire a lawyer.
She and a neighbor in the complex who works in real estate helped the tenants find Jonathan Sweet of Ketches Law Group, who took the case and filed suit on behalf of the tenants against Marina Bay Residences LLC, Bozutto Management Co., and Delaney Barrett, Bozzuto’s general manager. The case is in the early stages of discovery and slated for a jury trial, according to Sweet. (Gordon has moved out of the development.)
“Tenants in Massachusetts, whether in a brand-new luxury development like Marina Bay or any other kind of apartment, all have the right to expect a water-tight living space, free from widespread leaks and mold growth, and from having to live through an intrusive, disruptive, multi-year construction project to fix the structural defects in the buildings,” Sweet wrote in an email describing the allegations of the complaint. “It is also wrong when landlords fail to disclose such issues to tenants ahead of time, before they sign their leases. It is also wrong to refuse to let such tenants out of their leases without penalty or to rebuff reasonable requests for rent abatement. It is undisputed that the tenancies of the Marina Bay residents have been significantly impacted by these issues, and Keches Law Group is prosecuting this case in order to vindicate their rights.”
Marina Bay denied the allegations in court papers. A spokesperson wrote in a statement: “We recognize and acknowledge those residents who are frustrated by the pace of the construction and have taken steps to minimize the disruption and inconvenience. However, the team believes that the allegations in the legal complaint are not supported by the facts.”
Attorneys for Bozzuto, Barrett, and Cube 3 did not respond to requests for interviews, and Callahan’s would not comment on active litigation.
Kelleher said she expects more from a professionally managed complex where she pays $3,392 a month for a luxury one-bedroom apartment.
Communication with management has been minimal and, at times, rude, she said.
In addition to seeking damages and attorneys fees, the class-action suit asks the court to compel management to let people out of their leases without forcing them to pay a penalty; to cover the relocation and moving expenses of tenants who wish to vacate the property during the repair work; and to establish a fund for periodic and regular mold testing on the property, among other things.
“I don’t want to move out because … otherwise I really like it here,” Kelleher said. “I haven’t tried to break the lease, because I don’t want to move in the winter. First of all, I don’t have a place to go. Maybe when my lease is up in June, I’ll revisit that. I just want them to take responsibility.”
Jim Morrison can be reached at [email protected]. Follow us on X @GlobeHomes and subscribe to the Address newsletter at Boston.com/address-newsletter.
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