Fish Are Jumpin’ as Pier Reopens : Santa Monica: Beach city rolls out the red carpet for rebuilt section of structure. It had been closed since collapsing in storm seven years ago.

At precisely noon under Friday’s gray skies, two Santa Monica city workers opened the chain-link gates that lead to the city’s new municipal pier, and “Herbie Joe the Fisherman,” as he calls himself, became the happiest man in town.

“Boy, this is beautiful!” 72-year-old Herbie Joe exclaimed, rushing to the pier’s end so he could dip his line into the deep green waters below. “I’m giving ‘em cheese for the first course, cheddar cheese. I’m trying out a brand new reel, you know. Never used it before. I’ve saved it for this occasion.”

Certainly it was an occasion deserving of a new fishing reel. With music, ribbons and a hearty helping of civic pride, Santa Monica officials and residents reopened their municipal pier Friday, seven years after a 420-foot section collapsed into the sea at the height of a winter storm.

About 200 people turned out for the ceremony, which took place under a festive blue-and-white canopy at the pier’s end.

“In Santa Monica, we like to say that the pier is the soul of Santa Monica and the further the pier stretches to the sea the more soul we have,” said Mayor Dennis Zane, dressed for the occasion in a blue shirt and natty nautical white pants.

“This represents finally, once again, us stretching ourselves to the sea.”

The new pier’s first gift from the sea came just 10 minutes after its reopening, as Robert Khourey, an 18-year-old fisherman from Glendale, snagged a bass--the first fish caught off the new pier. The news spread in a rapid buzz, from one angler to another, as photographers rushed to snap the young man’s photo.

Khourey, who said he learned to fish on the Santa Monica Pier as a young boy, held up his prize for the cameras and then measured it: 13 inches. “Boy,” he said, beaming, “it’s been a long wait.”

The completion of the $10-million project marks the end of a massive reconstruction effort that included rebuilding the 45,000-square-foot southwest corner of the fishing pier and a portion of the pleasure pier, which houses amusement rides, including a historic carousel.

The rebuilding process, including exhaustive tests to ensure that the new pier would withstand violent storms, began in the spring of 1983, several months after the elements clobbered the old pier.

Like its predecessor, the new fishing pier has a rustic wooden deck. But to prevent nature from once again undoing man’s deeds, it also has concrete piles and a concrete substructure that should withstand even the most violent storms, according to city pier manager Judith Meister.

For Meister, who has been deeply involved with the reconstruction project, the pier has taken on almost human qualities. “I’ve been on the pier seven years and you really sense it has its own character, its own personality,” she said. “It has an ability to be a lot of things to a lot of different people.”

The pier is playful, with its lively video arcade and colorful T-shirt shops. It is serene, a place for young lovers to take in the salty sea air on a quiet evening walk. It is friendly, a spot where senior citizens gather in the morning to play cards and chat over coffee. It is open-minded, a haven for anyone who shows up there, regardless of ethnic background or financial standing in life.

But most of all, say those who know it well, the Santa Monica Pier is tough.

“It survives,” Meister said. “It survived the elements, changes in the economy and in people’s tastes.”

Indeed, the pier has survived not only a battery of winter storms but also an assault from Santa Monica city officials, who in the early 1970s voted to tear it down. Instead, that City Council was torn down, its members voted out of office on the wave of a grass-roots “Save the Santa Monica Pier” campaign.

“They said it was worn out,” declared a jubilant Councilwoman Chris Reed, a leader in that campaign, at Friday’s ceremony. “They said it was too old. They said it was a problem for the city.

“Well, I was born in this city and I love this pier. . . . The people of Santa Monica saved this pier. They saved it in 1973 and then 10 years later, they saved it again when nature threatened to demolish it.”

One resident, who at the time owned a restaurant on the pier, even took a second mortgage on her home to help finance the 1973 save-the-pier effort. She was later forced to sell the house when she couldn’t repay the loan.

At Friday’s ceremony, city officials honored the former restaurateur, Joan Crowne, with the first “Santa Monica Pier Prize,” in commemoration of her “dedication and devotion” to the pier.