Damaged Pier in Huntington Beach Closed, to Be Rebuilt

The 74-year-old Huntington Beach Pier--home to fishermen, strollers, the OP Pro Surfing Contest and an elderly woman’s pub, bait and sandwich shops--was closed indefinitely Tuesday by city officials, who called it a danger to the public.

Crippled by time and exposure to the briny elements, the pier is structurally unsafe and will be closed for about three years while it is rebuilt, City Administrator Paul Cook said.

With little fanfare and almost no notice, a chain-link fence was pulled across the entrance to the concrete-and-timber pier at about 2 p.m., and those on it were ushered off. By 3 p.m., it was off-limits until it can be rebuilt.

Good News and Bad

Reaction was mixed among merchants in the height of their summer tourist season in downtown Huntington Beach. Some said their business may be hurt and questioned the suddenness of the city’s action; others said the resulting publicity may draw spectators. Many seemed too stunned by the unexpected closure to have formed an opinion.

With the ground-breaking of Pierside Village, a Mediterranean-style oceanfront complex of shops and restaurants planned immediately south of the pier, the landmark would have been closed in nine months anyway for construction of a concession-stand wing, city officials said. It probably will take that long for work to begin on a new pier, while bids for design and construction are advertised.

Cook estimates that the new pier can be completed by the spring of 1991.

“You could have left it open for a week, for a month, for all summer,” Cook said later Tuesday. “But you could have had a

disaster and forever (have been known as) the city that let people die on a pier. Our other choice was to inconvenience our residents and tourists by saying, ‘Sorry, but we’re closing it . . . to rebuild it.’

“Given that, you could create a disaster that no one would ever forget. There didn’t seem much choice.”

Tuesday afternoon, a crowd gathered at the base of the pier near where television crews and reporters had arrived for a news conference held to discuss the closure. Many were noisy teen-age boys, who seemed more captivated by bikini-clad girls and the television cameras than witnessing a part of the city’s history.

But some residents who had gathered at the pier hollered at Cook and Mayor John Erskine that closing the 1,840-foot landmark “is something only the Irvine Co. would do!”

One surfer asked Erskine, “Can we still shoot it?”--a reference to riding waves as they roll through the pier pilings. Erskine told them the city would discourage that for safety reasons.

Merchants such as Ella Christensen, whose three concessions on the pier were closed for business indefinitely, were spitting mad.

Called ‘Shabby’

“For adults to conduct business this way is shabby,” said Christensen, 74, who has owned the Tackle Box at the seaward end of the pier for 37 years. “I don’t know what I’m going to do. I need time to think. What would you do if someone said you were going to die tomorrow?”

The closure was prompted by a preliminary report delivered to Cook on July 1. Engineers for Irvine-based Fluor Daniel Inc. strongly urged Huntington Beach to close the pier immediately, calling it unsafe.

Over the years, Cook explained, the concrete underbelly of the pier has fallen off in chunks, caught by a net apron beneath it but leaving its skeleton of steel-reinforcement beams exposed to rust and corrosion. A report, commissioned by the city after high seas ripped about a 250-foot bite off the tip and toppled the End Cafe into the sea in January, said the pier’s “reinforcing steel . . . has lost much, if not all, of its effectiveness in several key locations.”

“With no reinforcing steel,” the report continued, “the ability of these (primary support beams) to carry loads beyond the . . . weight of the pier (itself) is marginal and highly dependent on the questionable soundness of the remaining unreinforced concrete.”

In conclusion, according to excerpts provided Tuesday by Cook, the engineers said: “We consider the pier to be unsafe and must therefore recommend that it no longer be used.”

Doubted Seriousness

Although Fluor Daniel urged that the pier be torn down and a new one built, Cook said he didn’t believe that the problems were serious enough to warrant an immediate shutdown. In an interview last week, Cook said he believed that repair of the existing structure was economically impractical and that he would urge the City Council to vote for building a new one.

But on Friday, vice presidents for the engineering company, fearing that the city did not appreciate the gravity of the situation detailed in the report by lower-level engineers, telephoned Cook and urged him to act immediately. On Sunday, he went down to the beach and walked beneath the pier to examine its underside.

Cook said he “didn’t take it (the recommendation) at face value” until he met in person with high-level company officials Monday. He met Tuesday morning with his staff, trying to decide just when to close the pier.

“We were afraid (with advance notice) we would get tremendous crowds wanting to use it one more time . . . and invite disaster,” Cook said.

The pier, built in 1903 and used as a submarine lookout during World War II, will be demolished and rebuilt in stages, using the newly built portion as a platform to work toward the seaward end. This is a faster and cheaper method, Cook said.

It is too soon to calculate the economic impact to Huntington Beach, to merchants and property owners, city officials said Tuesday. “I know this is a very negative moment,” Cook conceded.

The cost to construct a new pier is estimated at about $10 million. The federal government has promised at least $1 million, Cook said, and officials are hoping that state and county agencies also will chip in. Taxes from projects in the downtown redevelopment area also may be used to pay the tab. Persons Interested in Pier Reconstruction, a grass-roots citizens group that banded together after the damage Jan. 17 from the heavy surf, has raised $19,000 toward rebuilding the pier, member Tom Bagshaw said. The group has pledges from developers and car dealers for another $35,000.

Closure will not affect the staging next month of the annual OP Pro Surf Contest, which attracts hundreds of thousands of spectators, Cook said. But signs warning surfers to stay away from the pier will be posted in highly visible spots. “As long as we don’t allow them to walk on the pier . . . I believe our liability will be covered,” Cook said.

While the City Council has not formally decided that the pier should be rebuilt, Erskine said his six fellow council members told him that they favored building a new pier.

The pier was to be the anchor of the city’s 336-acre downtown redevelopment project, where construction will begin in the next several months on Pierside Village, and later on a bevy of hotels, restaurants and condominiums. City officials said tax revenues generated by the increased value of the redeveloped properties may be used to help pay for the pier’s reconstruction.

The consulting firm told city officials that the pier could be rebuilt virtually identical to its current dimensions, but 10 feet higher. Its present lower elevation has left the pier’s end vulnerable to storm and wave damage, Cook said.

Both Cook and Erskine stressed their disappointment Tuesday at having to close the landmark.

“Huntington Beach losing its pier is kind of like Paris losing the Eiffel Tower,” Erskine said. “But we will still have the (pier) to look at.”

“We all love it,” Cook said, “and it’s important to the town.”

An older couple, he in a straw hat and she wearing pearls, strolled up to the chain-link fence long after the press conference had ended. They looked wistfully at the pier, then at each other.

“We came down to say hello (to the pier) and learned we had to say goodby,” commented Steve Powell, 67, smiling at his companion, Cato Rietergen, 65.

As for Christensen, she thinks that the whole thing smells of “dirty politics.” She doesn’t know exactly what, she said, but it just “stinks.” She has owned the Tackle Box for 37 years, Neptune’s Locker pub on the pier for 17 years and the Captain’s Galley sandwich shop for about 14 years. She said she learned that her three businesses would be shut down and her livelihood thrown into question in a noon telephone call from a reporter.

So as Cook and Erskine talked to reporters, Christensen huddled behind them, trying to hear what her future may hold. She squinted, shook her head and tapped her white sneakers.

“It’s pretty shabby, this no-notice,” Christensen said. “About 2, they started moving people off.” She ran her hands through her thick gray hair, paced back and forth, and asked Police Chief Grover Payne to “do something.”

A grown-up den mother of sorts to Huntington Beach police officers, Christensen considered calling in some chits but seemed to realize that it was futile.

“It’s gonna be closed for three years, Paul Cook says, and they don’t even know what they’re gonna do to it yet!”

Asked about the city’s concern over insurance liability and the public safety aspect, she said: “They can’t be too concerned with liability when they’re insuring themselves.”

What about her loyal customers? “Oh, they are going to raise hell,” she hissed, then broke into a smile for the first time all day.

Christensen was not the only one critical of the lack of notice given about the pier closure.

Cook arrived at his Huntington Beach home about 7 p.m. Tuesday and found a note that read: “I’m sad about the pier. We should have had some warning. Love, your wife.”