COVER STORY : Standing Firm : Area Piers Survive the Ravages of Time and Tide to Enjoy a New Wave of Renovation

WE ARE PERCHED ON THE westernmost portion of the continent, at the water’s very edge, and yet somehow it still isn’t quite far enough.

So we build piers.

They jut from every beach town, from Malibu to Manhattan Beach, fingers of wood or concrete reaching out to the sea. For more than a hundred years we have built them, enjoyed them, watched them get knocked down by waves or fires, and then built them up again. No matter how well-constructed they are, no matter how many tons of concrete or miles of reinforcing steel are put into them, the piers are destined to crumble and topple, victims of time and salt and pounding surf.

But, eventually, the piers rise again. It’s a constant cycle of construction and destruction and reconstruction.

We’re in a reconstruction cycle now. Newly renovated piers are busting out all over. Even the long-threatened Malibu Pier seems likely to benefit from $3 million in county funds, and a private developer is about to add an $11.3-million “Fun Zone” to Santa Monica’s pier, the busiest on the bay. The city of Santa Monica has already put about $12 million into rebuilding the 85-year-old structure, which was savaged by harsh storms in 1983.

In Los Angeles, the City Council last month approved a $3.2-million outlay to restore its Venice Fishing Pier, which was closed in 1986 after pieces of concrete fell from its upper deck. Plans call for 600 feet of new decking, handrails, walkways and replacement of some pilings, and additional repairs as needed for the pier’s second 600-foot stretch. Plans for a snack bar at the end of the pier depend on how much money is available once the pier work is done.

In Redondo Beach, city officials are planning a January opening for the new Municipal Pier, nearly seven years after storms and a fire dumped much of the old horseshoe-shaped pier into the ocean. In Hermosa Beach, plans are under way to renovate its 30-year-old fishing pier with new railings, beacons, a new snack shop and, maybe, a lighted neon tube running the pier’s entire 1,140-foot length. In Manhattan Beach, a restoration of that city’s 928-foot, 1920s-vintage concrete pier, including the Roundhouse at the end, was completed two years ago.

It’s considered an important process, this pier renewal, more important than simply providing platforms for fishermen or diners or strolling lovers. Piers reflect as well as define the cities that they connect to the sea.

“In many ways, a pier provides an identity for a community,” says James Crumpley, of Moffatt & Nichol Engineers in Long Beach, who has designed piers up and down the West Coast--including the Hermosa Beach Pier in the early 1960s. “Sometimes you can tell a lot about a community just by looking at its pier.”

At the Malibu Pier, home since 1972 to Alice’s Restaurant, the famous and the unknown take in vistas of surfers, romantic sunsets and flying squads of pelicans. To the south, there’s the bustling Santa Monica Municipal Pier, offering fast food, sit-down dining, carnival-style games of chance and views stretching from Point Dume at the tip of Malibu to Point Vicente on the Palos Verdes Peninsula, and beyond to Catalina. Before the pier closed in Venice, a few steps down its planks took visitors to a world of seagulls and fisherfolk, away from the gritty reality of the beachfront, with its tattooed gang members, gawking tourists and oddball entertainers.

In the South Bay, the graceful lines and stately light towers of the Manhattan Beach Pier suit a town so traditionally staid that until the 1930s even men weren’t allowed to wear topless bathing suits on the beach. The spare look of the Hermosa Beach Pier likewise matches that city’s unassuming style. Under reconstruction in Redondo Beach, the Municipal Pier, with its collection of arcades, seafood restaurants and bikini shops, harks back to the days when Redondo Beach was one of the wildest, bawdiest waterfronts on the West Coast.

The history of piers along the Santa Monica Bay has not always been one of sunny good fortune.

The first were built in the late 1800s, when entrepreneurs decided that Santa Monica and Redondo Beach were natural port sites--at a time when the now mighty Port of Los Angeles on the other side of the Palos Verdes Peninsula was a mosquito-infested swamp.

Initially, these piers were strictly commercial ventures, not recreational ones. A little wharf at Santa Monica’s Shoo Fly Landing, near the foot of what is now Colorado Avenue, provided a platform for ships to take pitch from the La Brea Tar Pits to feed the building boom in San Francisco.

Eventually, after much politicking, San Pedro won favor as the site for a deep-water port, and the bayside piers began to be used more for fishing and recreation than for maritime commerce.

By 1983, the Santa Monica pier was an amalgamation of a 1,900-foot-long, 35-foot wide municipal fishing pier and adjoining structures originally put up by private parties. There was an elaborately decorated carousel--still there--and, once upon a time, the La Monica Ballroom, which could hold 5,000 dancers and an equal number of onlookers, among other attractions.

And then disaster struck.

In the winter of 1983, a series of storms battered the Santa Monica pier, dumping a restaurant, the harbor master’s office, two huge cranes, a large refrigerator truck and three cars into the ocean, cutting the pier’s length by half.

Some residents called for demolition of the entire structure. After much debate, prompted in part by neighbors who were afraid that crowds and crime would return, the City Council decided to rebuild instead.

Now a Mexican restaurant graces the far end of the pier, along with a bait shop and a history exhibit.

Closer to shore, 12 new rides will make up the heart of a new “Fun Zone,” including a roller coaster, a swinging dragon ship, an 85-foot Ferris wheel, bumper cars and other attractions.

All except the roller coaster are slated for installation next summer, along with an indoor area for the carnival games, and the coaster is scheduled to be in place by the summer of 1996.

“It’s intended to be profitable . . . and when the Fun Zone is in place it will be profitable,” said John E. Gilchrist, executive director of the Santa Monica Pier Restoration Corp.

“It’s such a part of Santa Monica,” Gilchrist said. “It’s known internationally, and it’s a major amenity for the community and Southern California.”

Some of the area’s other piers have already been renovated, or may be in line for face lifts in the near future, among them the 89-year-old Malibu Pier, whose condition has worried state and local officials for years.

Built in 1905 as part of the private domain of Malibu rancher Frederick Hastings Rindge, it was nearly destroyed by a storm in 1942.

Rebuilt in 1944, it served as a U.S. Coast Guard station during wartime, when it was purchased by a private entrepreneur. It was wave-battered and neglected when the state took it over as a recreational site in 1980.

Although some pilings were shored up earlier this year, making it safe for public use, it is still in a deteriorated state, said Russell G. Guiney, Malibu sector superintendent for the state Department of Parks and Recreation.

The pier got a promise of rejuvenation when the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors voted on Dec. 1 to set aside $2.9 million in bond funds to fix it up, although it is still not clear whether the repair project will take place. Under a proposed deal, the state would lease the pier to the county to make it eligible for the restoration funds.

“It’s going to require the city, state and county to work together, but at least the money has been identified to save the Malibu Pier from total disrepair,” said former county Supervisor Ed Edelman, who pushed through the 4-0 vote on his last day in office.

“The pier has a public benefit,” Edelman said. “You can fish off it. . . . You can get the feeling of being on the ocean without swimming in it and without being in a big yacht on top. It’s giving everybody a way to access the ocean in a unique way.”

Although the Malibu City Council rejected an earlier version of the financing agreement, which would have required the city to spend $125,000 a year, City Manager David Carmany said the deal is not dead.

“There’s a lot of pieces we’re going to have to put together from the city’s side,” he said. “We haven’t pieced it together yet, but we’re working on it.”

The news also shed a ray of hope on the dispute between the state Department of Parks and Recreation and the operators of Alice’s Restaurant, who were served with an eviction notice for non-payment of rent last year.

Restaurant co-owner Bob Yuro, who has long complained about lack of repairs, now says he hopes for a settlement in the case next week.

“That would make our issue a little easier to handle,” he said. “Malibu always shines in the 11th hour.”

In Venice, where community protest thwarted the city’s original proposal to demolish the fishing pier, recent studies have shown that the structure can be salvaged, said Kathleen Chan, project manager for the Department of Recreation and Parks.

“We had to look for funding because the department unfortunately doesn’t have $2 (million) to $3 million to throw at every problem,” Chan said.

Construction is expected to start next year, thanks to voter approval of a countywide measure to pay for the restoration of recreational facilities.

Thus, the cycle continues. Storms, fires, political squabbles and lack of money have been crashing against Southern California’s piers for more than a century. Yet, somehow, the piers endure.