Fort Lauderdale has removed a section of the base beneath its 9/11 memorial on the Riverwalk, pulling the piece to safety after soil erosion tied to a failing seawall left crumbling bricks and dangerous gaps around the site just weeks before the attacks' 25th anniversary on September 11.
City officials say the section was taken out to protect it from potential damage, and that it has been stored safely while the city figures out what can be done around the memorial before the anniversary, according to a city statement reported by CBS News. The memorial itself, dedicated on September 11, 2020 by then-Mayor Dean Trantalis after a three-year acquisition effort by the nonprofit Riverwalk Fort Lauderdale, is built around a 15-foot PATH transit rail segment pulled from beneath World Trade Center wreckage and driven down to Florida by three off-duty Fort Lauderdale firefighters, according to GoRiverwalk. That steel rail came from a transit station buried at 9:10 a.m. on September 11, 2001, just minutes after the second tower was struck.
The damage did not appear overnight. Soil erosion caused pavers along the Riverwalk near the memorial to slip into the New River, and the same erosion left the dangerous gaps that ultimately forced crews to intervene. A city spokesperson said Fort Lauderdale is committed to preserving the memorial and recognizes its significance, and that officials plan to reinstall the removed base section and even elevate the memorial and surrounding area once broader seawall improvements move forward.
A Riverwalk Already Under Siege
The memorial's troubles are part of a wider collapse along the same stretch of waterfront. Just two weeks before the base removal, a portion of the public Riverwalk walkway gave way when soil escaped through the cracked seawall, prompting the city to barricade the path from Andrews Avenue to the railway bridge, as reported by CBS News. Nearby resident Matt Tauer said erosion has become a major topic of conversation in his building along the Riverwalk, and he said he wonders whether the erosion will worsen soon.
Rick Celender, a founding donor of the newly redone Huizenga Park, described the subsidence and the memorial's deterioration as scary, and said the memorial could end up in the New River by the time the 25th anniversary arrives. The city's own seawall replacement master plan ranks the aging Riverwalk seawall as its second priority, but construction is not expected to begin until summer 2027 and will take at least a year to complete.
Engineering Fix Years in the Making
Design work on the fix has been in motion for more than a year. Engineering plans presented to city officials in June 2025 called for demolishing roughly 500 linear feet of the Riverwalk's north seawall and rebuilding it forward of the current structure, raising it from 3 feet to 5 feet above sea level, according to Citizen Portal. That height mirrors a 2023 update to Fort Lauderdale's municipal code, which raised the minimum required seawall elevation citywide from 3.9 feet to 5.0 feet NAVD88 to combat sea level rise and king tide flooding, per the Waterfront Times.
To help pay for the Riverwalk North Seawall work, the Fort Lauderdale City Commission passed Resolution 26-26 in March, authorizing the city manager to seek a Florida Inland Navigation District grant of up to $2,967,364. Seawall replacement across the city typically runs between $1,200 and $2,000 per linear foot, and private property owners who miss compliance deadlines face daily fines of $100, enforced by code officers who patrol the city's 200 miles of waterways aboard a dedicated boat, according to SafeSeawalls.
Ceremony Forced to Relocate
The disruption has already changed how Fort Lauderdale marks the anniversary. The city's official September 11 remembrance ceremony has historically been held at the Fort Lauderdale Fire and Safety Museum, and will be held there again this year on September 11. The museum occupies Historic Fire Station No. 3, a Mediterranean Revival building built in 1927 that served as an active firehouse until 2004.
The Thank You First Responder Organization, a Fort Lauderdale-based nonprofit co-founded in 2014 to support emergency personnel, usually holds its own remembrance directly at the memorial. This year the group says the memorial grounds are too unsafe for that gathering and plans to move its 2026 ceremony around the corner instead.
The scramble in Fort Lauderdale echoes struggles elsewhere in South Florida, where municipal 9/11 memorials have proven difficult to build and maintain. In nearby Miramar, a memorial dedicated five years earlier still sat unfinished in 2026 due to contractor disputes and cost overruns, as Hoodline previously reported. For Fort Lauderdale, the immediate goal is narrower: get through the 25th anniversary with the memorial intact while the slower work of rebuilding the seawall beneath it grinds forward.
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