So in Illinois merely refusing to provide the report is illegal on its own. So it's unlikely a condo lawyer did this "just to win" for a safe building. Specifically if you take the HOA to court for not revealing a document they legally have to, and the judge sides with the unit owner, the HOA has to pay the owner's attorney fees.

The issue is HOAs and management companies have warchests for stuff like this, individual owners of partial-buildings generally do not have a lot of money to fund lawyers until the judgment happens.

Maybe you could explain why you think they refused to turn the engineer report over?

Obviously I don't know the details but their lawyer being an adversarial asshole sounds most likely to me.

What other explanation is there? Like... was the board planning to sell their units before people realized the building had problems?

So the HOA was indeed quite concerned with their property values and that a higher assessment impacts sale value. It's also important to note that this HOA covered multiple buildings, and none of the board lived in mine: So their unit was not at risk from the structure, but their assessment price was.

The buildings were approaching an age where more significant/costly maintenance is necessary and I don't think they wanted to have to do those things.