Seal Beach Rejoins the Pier Group : Landmarks: The fixture reopens after repairs for a fire--the latest in a series of problems. Main Street merchants are happy about the increase in foot traffic.

The crown jewel of Seal Beach, its 89-year-old wooden pier, has reopened permanently.

Final repairs on the pier, which was damaged by fire last year, were completed in time for summer, although the weather Saturday did little to accommodate the occasion.

The gray skies, however, didn’t stop Richard J. Bond from carting his fishing gear to pier at sunrise.

“I’ve been coming to this pier for 15 years, but when it burned, I went over to Belmont Pier,” said Bond, who with his wife, Libby, carried the day’s catch of 10 barracudas. “But this is the best place and now that it’s all repaired, I’m coming back.”

Throughout the morning, pedestrians gazed at the steely ocean as surfers drifted on their boards, waiting long intervals for unrewarding swells. Lovers held hands and ignored other passersby. Along the pier’s sides, friends and families fished while now and then a father showed his child how to bait a hook.

John Godo of Irvine said he rushed out to fish Saturday morning, returning to a favorite fishing spot on the pier after a year’s absence.

“I used to come here regularly for five years--until it burned,” he said while baiting a hook for his 4-year-old daughter, Kylie. “There’s really good fishing here: mackerel near the top, sand sharks and halibut in the middle.

“And I always seem to catch more when it’s cloudy,” Godo said.

Over the years, parts of the pier have been battered by heavy winds, cracked during an earthquake and burned by two fires.

In May, 1992, an electrical fire burned part of the pier. The following month, several pilings were damaged by the Landers earthquake. And the most recent calamity, the fire of May, 1994, came not from a natural disaster, but probably from when falling barbecue coals ignited a gas line and caused about $350,000 in damage.

The 1,865-foot pier was closed until the first phase of repairs was completed last July. It was closed again last month for final repairs, forcing a sportfishing business and Ruby’s restaurant near the pier’s end to shut down.

But patched up, repaired and rebuilt, the pier remains the city’s premier attraction.

“It is what makes Seal Beach,” Councilwoman Marilyn Bruce Hastings said. As one of Orange County’s two remaining wooden piers, it adds a unique charm to the city, she said. But equally important to the city is its function as the economic locomotive for Main Street.

“Unfortunately, the city is not a destination resort, so the Main Street merchants are dependent on the foot traffic,” Hastings said. “For them, the pier has a tremendous impact. On a summer night, people are out shoulder to shoulder walking that pier.”

Indeed, the pier’s drawing power could be felt Saturday along Main Street as pedestrians stopped at bakeries, restaurants and shops, slowly working their way to the water’s edge.

In particular, several Main Street merchants said they hoped to get an economic boost from Ruby’s reopening.

“It’ll make a big difference now that Ruby’s is back open,” said Victoria Burroughs in her shop, The Antique Gallery. “They’re a real draw along here and there are people who come down here just to go eat there.”

A few doors down, used-book store owner Nathan Cohen agreed. Summer business should be healthy, he said, now that the pier has been repaired.

“The pier really means a lot to businesses along this street,” said Cohen of Bookstore on Main Street. “I remember when the pier was down when the storm wiped it out and at night after 6 you wouldn’t see anybody on the street. That was hard.

“But basically the city, the businesses and the pier all work hand in hand.”