A Miami Beach homeowner who says he’ll be stuck listening to a water park from his front porch has sued Jeffrey Soffer’s Fontainebleau Miami Beach, arguing that a state law tailor-made for the resort illegally lets it bypass a city vote on its controversial 99-foot waterslide tower. Richard Simring filed the complaint in June, asking a court to strike the provision and claiming it violates the Florida Constitution.
Simring has lived in his La Gorce Drive home since 1999, according to the lawsuit, which is about one mile from the Fontainebleau property, as reported by The Real Deal. He raised concerns in the complaint about traffic, noise, crowds and changes to the neighborhood’s character, and claimed the project would permanently alter his surroundings. Fontainebleau has disputed his claim that he lives across the street from the resort, and the company’s attorneys argue his home is separated from the hotel by multiple bodies of water and structures.
The case centers on House Bill 399, which Governor Ron DeSantis signed into law on a Friday afternoon in March 2026 after it cleared the Florida Legislature earlier that month, according to CBS News. The law allows large destination resorts with more than 500 rooms on at least five acres — and an average occupancy rate of at least 70 percent over the past three years — to bypass local historic preservation board review. It requires cities to administratively approve development-rule modifications affecting up to 20 percent of the land occupied by qualifying resorts. Simring alleges in his complaint that the law orders Miami Beach to approve the Fontainebleau project and skip historic board review entirely.
A Resort Overhaul Years in the Making
Fontainebleau Miami Beach, which opened in 1954 with 1,593 guest rooms at 4441 Collins Avenue, was designed by Miami Modernist architect Morris Lapidus and added to the U.S. National Register of Historic Places on December 22, 2008, per background compiled by Docomomo US. When Fontainebleau Development first unveiled its outdoor overhaul in August 2025, the plan called for 11 waterslides, including a flagship 120-foot drop slide, and the reconfiguration of 10 existing pools into five pools and two hot tubs, according to Bucket Listers…