The fight over whether the site of June’s deadly Florida condominium collapse should be sold for development or turned into a memorial boiled over at a recent court hearing, with some victims’ relatives begging for time to find a buyer who won’t put a new luxury high-rise there.

Several victims’ relatives said the Surfside site where the 12-story Champlain Towers South once stood is hallowed ground. They pleaded with the judge overseeing the land’s sale to let them find a private party or government that would buy the two-acre beachfront lot at its approximate value of $150 million and donate it for a memorial to the 98 who died.