Council to Consider Pier’s Restoration

The City Council is scheduled to vote Monday on a $2.2-million plan to restore the Ventura Pier.

A culmination of city and grass-roots efforts, the plan would extend the length of the pier with an 80-by-60-foot octagon-shaped landing, replacing part of the pier destroyed in a winter storm in 1995.

“I’m happy with it,” said Monty Clark, president of Pier Into the Future, a nonprofit group dedicated to preserving and maintaining the Ventura Pier. “This will be our pier into the millennium.”

Though the proposal may not fully restore the pier to its pre-storm length of 1,958 feet--something many residents had hoped for--Clark is confident the design will have community support.

In addition to adding the octagonal landing, a large portion of the funds will be spent to rebuild an existing 120 feet of outer timber piles, using steel piles, according to city engineer Rick Raives.

Any leftover money from the $2.2 million in state and insurance funds would be spent on amenities, such as benches, flagpoles and interpretive panels describing marine life and the pier’s history.

Raives predicted that if approved by the council Monday, the new landing could be completed by October 1999.