Pier Reconstruction Heads in New, Maybe Narrower Direction

Discussion of the Ventura Pier, the city’s most vulnerable landmark, veered into a new direction Thursday night as the public urged city officials to also consider the issue of width, rather than just length, when rebuilding.

Until now, consultants, engineers and local pier supporters had all fixated on how to return the pier to its original 1,958-foot length.

But city staff, speaking at a special public hearing held by the Community Affairs Commission, made it clear that a $2.5-million insurance settlement would be insufficient to both rebuild the pier to its full length and strengthen it to withstand the annual pummeling of winter waves.

Then Ventura resident Don Mills came up with a provocative proposal: make the pier skinny.

“Length is important,” said Mills, a civil engineer. “So what if we build it skinny, but longer?”

Mills pointed out that the 425 feet of the pier demolished in December 1995 had been about 60 feet wide. What if, he queried, the pier was reduced to a 28-foot width and made twice as long?

The simplicity of Mills’ proposal struck a chord.

The seven commission members stumbled over themselves to ask questions about a longer, thinner pier.

They specifically wanted Public Works Director Ron Calkins to determine whether the consultants who authored an inch-thick feasibility study--which offered six rebuilding alternatives ranging from no action to using steel piles and elevated walkways--had ever considered a narrower pier extension.

None of the 11 people who spoke seemed concerned that Ventura might have to relinquish its claim of having the longest wooden pier in California. But almost every one pushed the City Council-appointed advisory commission to rebuild the pier to its original length.

They seemed dissatisfied with the staff’s recommendation that the existing pier be strengthened with steel braces, and that only 160 feet of the pier be reconstructed, but with stronger steel piles. They want their old pier back. And they want it long.

“Our first priority should be to extend. Then we can keep working back,” said Barbara Harison of the Pier Campaign Steering Committee, a nonprofit group that has helped raise $400,000 toward the pier restoration. “We can retrofit at any time.”

Ted Temple, a member of the city’s design review committee who is trained to care about aesthetics, said: “It seems to me kind of stubby right now. It seems it will still be a little stubby if we only do the proposed extension.”

Others used more innovative arguments in favor of a longer pier.

Scientist-economist Brian Lee Rencher said a 22-year solar cycle, which alters worldwide weather patterns, had contributed to the pier’s destruction. But the area is entering a 22-year “window of calm,” he said, so the pier will probably last for awhile this time around.

But most of the nearly three dozen people at the hearing seemed won over by Mills’ proposal.

With width on their minds, the commission adjourned without settling on a formal recommendation for the City Council. At the behest of commission chairman Devlin Raley, the staff will gather information on the pier’s original width and review the engineering merits of a narrower pier.

Raley also asked that consultant Charles Rauw, author of the feasibility study, attend the next commission meeting Sept. 19, which will also be open to the public.

Because, as Temple pointed out, the pier’s profile can make a difference.

“That silhouette, that view [of the pier] is critical,” Temple said, adding that drivers cruising down the Ventura Freeway will look out at the coastline and say to themselves: “Am I going to check this Ventura place out? Or am I going to keep going to Santa Barbara?”