Pier Promoters Plan a Roundhouse Rite : Manhattan Beach: Celebration on Saturday will mark the completion of renovations on the 92-year-old landmark.

Over its 92-year life, the Manhattan Beach Pier has been hit by heavy weather ranging from the meteorological to the political.

In 1900, a big winter storm made matchwood of it. Later, rebuilt with steel and railroad ties, it succumbed to rust. And though the current concrete pier has stood for 72 years, lawsuit-wary elected officials came close to demolishing the structure in the mid-1980s after a chunk of it fell on a jogger.

But today the pier is thriving, a point that city and county officials plan to underscore with a celebration on Saturday. The occasion is the opening of the newly restored roundhouse, a domed building at the end of the 928-foot pier that is home to a snack bar and a marine science center for children.

The roundhouse renovation marks the last stage of an 18-month, $3.8-million project to overhaul the pier, most of which reopened in February after undergoing a year of much-needed repairs.

“The pier is the focal point and pride of the community,” says City Engineer Dana Greenwood. “We tried to keep it looking exactly like it did when it was built in the 1920s. Hopefully, the pier will last another 70 to 100 years.”

Local merchants, eager for more seaside visitors, are also applauding the project.

“Business was really dead when the pier was closed,” said Arlin Rimmer, manager of Sunsets restaurant, just steps from the pier. “We’re glad to see it’s open again.”

Saturday’s celebration on the pier will feature singers, a lifeguard demonstration, a ribbon-cutting, an art exhibit and an afternoon flyby courtesy of the renamed Goodyear blimp, Airship Eagle. The focus of the festivities, however, will be the roundhouse, originally opened in 1921 as a cafe.

The new building houses the Oceanographic Training Station (OTS), a nonprofit educational organization that teaches marine science to schoolchildren. A 12-foot cylindrical aquarium will be on public view Saturday in the roundhouse, along with a photo display prepared by the city’s historical society.

With a $10,000 grant from the Atlantic Richfield Co. and a squad of volunteers, OTS first set up a classroom and exhibit area in 1980 in the then-deteriorating roundhouse.

Since then, more than 20,000 primary and secondary schoolchildren from as far away as Palmdale have participated in OTS classes each year. During the pier reconstruction, OTS conducted classes from a beachfront trailer at the Chevron Oil Refinery in El Segundo.

The organization pays Manhattan Beach $1 a year in rent for its office, which will also serve as an interpretive center on weeknights and weekends.

“We’re grateful to Manhattan Beach,” said Jim Babbit, OTS director. “If you think about your old biology class, the book was old, the teacher was old. It was hot and there were flies. It was boring. But here, this is real.”

The organization’s teachers, he said, sometimes use unorthodox techniques.

“These marine biologists (instructors) are crazy as hell,” he added. “They pick out one wise guy, and at the end of the class they put a lobster on his head. It gets students fired up.”

OTS plans to expand its roundhouse facility in the next six months but is currently $120,000 short of its fund-raising goal. Babbit blames cost-cutting in the faltering aerospace industry for the low level of donations.

The organization hopes to purchase a shark tank and touch tank for $60,000, which is considered essential for the teaching facility. The touch tank will enable visitors to handle sea urchins, sea stars and other ocean creatures.

“We want to keep it a real hands-on program, not just an aquarium where you walk in and just look at a bunch of fish. We want you to be able to get your hands in there and get wet and dirty,” said Bob Potter, an OTS instructor.

The roundhouse, like the rest of the pier, is built of nine-inch thick concrete, triple the width of the pier before the overhaul took place. Engineers hope that the structure, which is reinforced with treated steel to resist corrosion, will hold together better than its predecessor.

In 1984, a jogger was left a quadriplegic after being struck by a falling piece of concrete from the pier. The jogger eventually won a multimillion-dollar award in a settlement with the county, which operated the pier before the city assumed control in 1988.

The accident prompted many city officials to recommend that the pier be demolished and replaced. Some county officials, concerned about escalating liability insurance rates, recommended that the pier be torn down.

But community groups, including the Manhattan Beach Pier Restoration Assn. and Pier Pressure, vowed to preserve the town’s historical landmark, and they battled initial county and city pressure to destroy it. The groups raised more than $10,000 for the restoration project.

More important, the grass-roots fund-raising efforts helped clear the way for federal, state and city funding to save the pier.

“The pier is the last real connection to the town’s early resort days when everyone knew each other and this city was a real community,” said Keith Robinson of the Manhattan Beach Pier Restoration Assn. “I’m thrilled by the whole restoration project.”

Wilmer Drake, of the Manhattan Beach Historical Society and an expert on the pier’s background, also says he’s pleased with the restoration. Drake, however, is fond of pointing out that the pier was originally designed to be 1,500 feet long.

“They ran out of money at 928 feet,” he said.