Better Times Promised for Historic Malibu Pier : Landmark: Restaurateur and partners, about to take concession rights in a 20-year deal with the state, say they’ll turn the structure into a ‘class act.’

As a leading attraction in a community short on landmarks, the Malibu Pier has seldom won much respect.

Long battered by severe storms and neglected by absentee landlords, the 84-year-old pier collapsed into the Pacific Ocean half a century ago. Once rebuilt, it was twice closed as unsafe, the last time, in 1983, for an entire year.

Now, nine years after the state spent $2.5 million to acquire the pier in a bid to rescue it from decades of neglect, a Malibu restaurant owner who is soon to become the pier’s new concession manager predicts better times ahead.

“We don’t aim to come in here just to make a fast buck,” said Bob Yuro, co-owner of Alice’s Restaurant on the pier. “We intend to make the pier a class act, in keeping with the kind of place Malibu is.”

State officials last month announced plans to award Yuro and three partners concession rights at the pier for the next 20 years in exchange for a promise to repair and refurbish the neglected landmark.

The agreement, to be finalized in two weeks, ends a turbulent year in the life of the pier, which state officials say is visited by more than 500,000 people from around the world each year.

Although Yuro and his partners say their plans for the pier are incomplete, among the ideas being considered are a multilevel gift shop at the pier’s seaward end, a new restaurant across from Alice’s at the landward end and an expanded sport-fishing operation.

The group has said it will install new lights, benches and railings.

“This pier is going to become a focal point for Malibu, a place that glitters at night, and that is a fun, family-oriented attraction during the day,” Yuro said. “We may even have jazz concerts out here.”

The pier’s run-down condition has long been an embarrassment to state officials who spent nearly $2 million on structural repairs after acquiring the pier in 1980 only to have a severe 1983 winter storm leave it in worse shape than before.

Roberto Vallanoweth, who heads the Concession Program Division of the state parks department, said the state’s main aim in awarding the concession contract to Yuro and his partners is to have the pier repaired and properly maintained.

Under terms of the contract, Yuro and his partners, who include Malibu builder Fred Patrick, have agreed to make “significant structural improvements” to the pier during the next five years, Vallanoweth said.

State and private estimates of the repair cost range from $2 million to $4 million. However, Yuro said the group expects to do the repairs for less because Patrick has expertise in pier work.

Some Malibu community leaders, and the Malibu Chamber of Commerce, criticized the state earlier this year for not doing the repair work itself before turning the pier over to a private concessionaire.

With the choice of Yuro, however, who has operated Alice’s on the pier since 1974, the criticism appears to have dissipated. Besides Yuro and Patrick, the other partners are Alice’s co-owner, Peter Palazzo, and Andre Guerrero, the restaurant’s executive chef.

“We think Mr. Yuro and the others will do a good job,” said Mary Lou Blackwood, the chamber’s executive director. “They’re familiar with the pier, and know what it takes to make sure it is properly repaired and maintained.”

The state had been looking for a new operator for months, trying to fill the gap created by a former landlord, who abruptly walked away from a 20-year lease last year and then sued the state for more than $20 million in damages, alleging breach of contract.

In March, 1988, the state had awarded the concession contract to West Los Angeles lawyer Joel Ladin, who promptly announced that he was raising the rents of Alice’s and Malibu Sport Fishing, the pier’s mainstays, by up to 500%.

The sport-fishing enterprise closed its doors amid much fanfare and a huge farewell party, and Yuro threatened to move the popular restaurant to Pacific Palisades.

Ladin, unable to attract new businesses to the pier, and faced with having to spend more money than expected for repairs, walked away from the contract last November. His suit against the state, which alleges it did not fully disclose the extent of damage to the pier, is pending.

The pier, built in 1905 as part of the private domain of Malibu rancher Frederick Hastings Rindge, was nearly destroyed by a severe storm in 1942. Rebuilt in 1944, it served as a U.S. Coast Guard security station toward the end of World War II.

It was acquired by the state in 1980 from Los Angeles businessman William Huber, whose father had bought the pier for $50,000 and rebuilt it in 1944. Sources familiar with the acquisition say that Huber had tried to sell the pier numerous times before persuading the state to buy it. In one well-publicized attempt, he even tried to auction off the pier--on the pier itself--four months before the state acquired it.

But with state funds unavailable for repairs, revenues from the pier’s businesses lagging and the pier’s already poor condition made worse by the 1983 storm, the state’s ambitious renovation plans languished.

Indeed, some familiar with the pier’s checkered history have privately questioned whether the new operators will be able to succeed where others have failed.

Yuro, however, remains optimistic.

“Getting control of the pier has long been my dream,” he said. “But I didn’t get into this on emotion. If we didn’t think there was an opportunity here, we wouldn’t be doing it.”