VENTURA : Weather Aids Construction of Pier Restaurant

Aided by unusually fair weather, construction of a 6,000-square-foot seafood restaurant at the base of the Ventura Pier has begun taking shape, and the operator hopes to open the two-story eatery by next spring.

“If the weather holds, we are going to be in good shape,” said Eric Wachter, owner of Eric Ericsson’s Fish Co. in Ventura, who won the contract to operate the pier restaurant. “We are looking at an April opening.”

The 220-person-capacity restaurant, to be called Eric Ericsson’s On The Pier, will consist of a 4,000-square-foot dining area on the first floor and a 2,000-square-foot bar on the second level.

Construction workers started pouring 160 yards of concrete for the restaurant’s foundation on Monday.

To keep the two-story building from weighing down the century-old wooden pier, the foundation was laid with about 14 inches of light-weight Styrofoam coated with about six inches of concrete.

The first delivery of steel beams will arrive today, and the building’s frame is expected to go up in the next two weeks.

Hoping to boost tourism, city leaders set the pier restaurant as a top priority last year and agreed to spend up to $830,000 to build it.

Since then, the city has approved more than $200,000 in additional expenditures to reinforce pier supports and expand the restaurant.

Most recently, the City Council approved spending an additional $98,000 to brace the restaurant to the pier, bumping total construction costs for the project to more than $1 million.

City officials expect to recover most of the construction costs in future lease payments.

“It was a year and a half in developing,” Wachter said. “To actually finally see it . . . is exciting.”