San Clemente : Work Not Yet Finished on San Clemente Pier

The band has gone, the music has faded and fishermen again are casting lines from its deck, but work still continues on the San Clemente Pier, rededicated last week amid much fanfare.

According to City Engineer Ed Putz, there are still a few details to be nailed down. Literally.

Many of the nails holding the 1,296-foot landmark’s deck in place protrude from the planks, a condition Putz said was the result of the deck flexing under the weight of heavy construction work, compounded by waves.

Although work crews will be hammering the nails to make them flush with the deck, not all corrections will be quite so simple. The towering lamps that line the pier’s edges have to go.

“The contractor didn’t receive the correct light posts from his supplier, but he put up the ones he received anyway and he’ll replace them when the right ones come in,” Putz said.

“When they received the poles, they were the wrong shape, and the contractor told the suppliers to ship the right ones,” he said. “The second time, they got the right shape, but the wrong color.”

Happily, Putz said, the correct light posts are on the way to San Clemente and should be installed by the end of next week.

In the meantime, the posts and protruding nails in the planks have attracted the attention of City Councilwoman Karoline Koester, who complained of the apparent defects in a memo to City Manager Jim Hendrickson.

Koester, who believes the city should not have held the rededication ceremony before all the work was completed, said her main concern is that the city gets “value received for money paid.”

Putz, however, said the city has not formally accepted the pier and will continue to keep 10% of the unpaid repair bill until 30 days after the work is accepted. If all goes well, he said, the contractor, Long Beach-based Healy Tibbits Co., will receive the approximately $70,000 the city owes it by the end of August.