Nobody’s Happy With Half a Pier; Oceanside Working on Financing

Seven years ago, during a wicked winter storm that whipped up record high tides, raging waves dismembered this city’s historic wooden pier, sweeping a 560-foot chunk of it--including a bait shop and restaurant--out to sea.

During the winter of 1982-83, the ocean struck again, damaging the aging structure and leaving a 110-foot-long section standing as an odd-looking island. The island succumbed to the sea a year later.

Today, the once-popular fixture--which, at 1,600 feet was the longest wooden pier on the West Coast when it was built in 1947--is a battered stretch of planks and pilings, extending seaward a mere 860 feet.

Fishermen grumble about its reduced length and rickety condition. Tourists expecting a “classic,” bustling pier are disappointed. And redevelopment officials dream of the days when a long, gleaming new pier with busy restaurants will be a centerpiece for the city’s changing waterfront.

Indeed, nobody seems too happy with only half a pier.

After years of effort, city officials now say a new and improved Oceanside Municipal Pier may be on the horizon. A financial package to demolish the deteriorating pier and rebuild it to its original length is in the works.

“It’s been a long haul, and a real struggle trying to juggle the grants and get commitments on funding the project,” said Dick Watenpaugh, the city’s recreation director. “But I think we’ll be making some big decisions that will mean real progress before too long.”

Next week, Watenpaugh will present the city manager with a report listing options for rebuilding the pier and recommending alternatives for financing the project. A proposal with suggested revenue sources is expected to go before the City Council sometime next month.

Oceanside is one of three cities in the county struggling to repair their storm-battered piers. Imperial Beach officials say their pier-restoration project is on the back burner, but efforts to rebuild San Diego’s Crystal Pier are gaining steam.

A new pier has been on the civic agenda in Oceanside since that first fateful storm in 1978. Although the city has been pledged nearly $800,000 by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to rebuild the portion lost several years ago, there’s been a hitch: the FEMA money could only be used to replace the most seaward section of the pier, the part lost in the storm. And Oceanside lacked the money to rebuild it out to that point.

“We were stuck,” Councilman Walt Gilbert said. “The feds said they would replace the outer section, that one-third that washed away, but not the inner section. And since it didn’t make much sense to build an outer section without a new inner section, we were really in a Catch-22.”

Another setback came in November, 1983, when voters rejected a special tax measure that would have raised $14.8 million to return sand to the city’s beaches and restore the pier. About $2 million would have been applied to the pier project.

“That hurt,” Watenpaugh said. “Had it passed, it would have given us the dollars we needed to get going. We’d be well on our way by now.”

But things are looking up. City officials said they are hopeful that FEMA will soon lift the funding roadblock and allow the project to proceed if the city commits itself to restoring the lost portion at a later date.

Additional funding has been secured from several state sources, bringing the total available for the reconstruction to $1.5 million. The city still needs $2.5 million more to meet the estimated cost of the project, but Watenpaugh said that additional grants, loans from government sources, money from the general fund, and fees that developers pay to finance park construction and maintenance could cover the balance.

“We’ve got deadlines looming next year on the FEMA money and some of the state grants, so it’s time to get going and put together a package now,” Watenpaugh said. “I think the council agrees that the pier is once again a priority.”

The existing pier is the third such structure to grace Oceanside’s shoreline, Watenpaugh said. Before the city was incorporated in 1888, a metal pier served as a boat-launching and commercial fishing facility. In the early 1900s, a wooden pier was built. It was replaced by the existing 22-foot-wide structure in 1947.

Although still fairly sound, the pier “has got to go,” Watenpaugh said. “The wood structure is too old to renovate, and those pilings have been there since 1947.”

During heavy storms and unusually strong currents, the pier is closed.

Like Oceanside’s pier, Crystal Pier in Pacific Beach and the Imperial Beach Municipal Pier have been crippled by storms through the years. And, like Oceanside, Imperial Beach and San Diego have had some difficulty getting reconstruction on line.

The 20-year-old Imperial Beach pier has an especially troubled past. In 1980, storms and a fire severely damaged the structure and wiped out the T-shaped end of it. The city rebuilt the lost portion with $564,000 in FEMA funds, but in March, 1983, storm-driven waves swept away 180 feet of the pier.

“Our experience with the pier has been rather frustrating,” City Manager Sherman Stenberg said.

It now stands 920 feet long. Stenberg said that plans to reinforce and widen the pier, and raise its end, are on hold pending the city’s completion of a beachfront development project.

“We’re in the midst of planning a commercial, hotel, residential mix on 33 acres at the beachfront, so we’d like to do something to tie into that somehow, rather than just rebuild the pier stick by stick,” Stenberg said. “Our vision is that rather than just being an old fishing pier, it should have some commercial development that is in line with our overall beachfront.”

Stenberg said the city will seek federal and state funding assistance once the plans are complete, probably in the next two years.

In San Diego, officials have amassed $600,000 in capital improvement funds and aid from FEMA to renovate the 58-year-old Crystal Pier and rebuild the 240-foot portion lopped off by crushing waves in 1983.

Ernie Mittemeyer, pier project manager with the city’s Property Department, said bids for the renovation work--to include replacement of timbers, pilings and bolts--will be solicited this summer. Then the city will begin lengthening the pier with its $300,000 worth of FEMA funds.

“We’re not sure whether that will be sufficient to do the job, because we want to raise the end of it so that high waves won’t get under and lift it,” Mittemeyer said. “We figure we’ll just start heading west and see how far we get.”