Ventura Hopes Rebuilt Pier Makes a Splash

The sea-battered Ventura Pier, built back when this beach-side town was more accessible by water than roadway, reopened Saturday after a seven-month, $2.2-million renovation to bolster the historic monument against the weight of the Pacific.

Balmy weather drew about 2,500 people to the beach to admire the pier’s new octagonal end, steel-reinforced pilings and dozens of aesthetic changes designed to make the structure more inviting.

City officials, who want the pier to draw more tourists and local residents to the downtown area, hope the new steel pilings and an elevated deck will save the structure from the brutal winter swells that have nearly destroyed it nine times in the last 128 years.

Among the efforts to spruce up the structure, they point to the decorative gate that replaced the old chain-link fence, a 50-foot flagpole, wooden benches, colorful pennants and information panels posted to describe the pier’s history. Floodlights will light up the surf at night.

The new deck at the pier’s end is the perfect place for events and the pier’s history already makes it a tourist attraction, said Janice Wagar, the city’s marketing manager.

On Saturday, people in sandals and tank tops walked their dogs along the wooden planks, while others cast fishing lines off the side and shared bags of free popcorn and cups of ice cream. At the end of the pier, seven men in suits played jazz as women in period costumes smiled behind their feather fans.

When the pier was completed in 1872 the structure was named the Hueneme Wharf, and it marked a new boom era for the dusty towns of Ventura County by giving farmers better shipping access. It was also the gateway for California travelers who reached the area by steamboat instead of risking their lives on a mountain stagecoach.

The Ventura Pier, however, is also the focal point for some of the Pacific Ocean’s most powerful winter waves.

“Under certain conditions, wave energy will converge right at the pier,” said meteorologist Rey Strange, a city consultant. An underwater ridge, he said, sends waves directly toward the structure.

For decades, the pier has endured severe weather and violent waves, including a 1937 storm that destroyed about 700 feet.

After a 1986 storm, the pier was so damaged that state officials kept it closed until the city assumed ownership in 1993, said City Engineer Rick Raives.

Then a storm in December 1995 consumed 400 feet of the structure and yanked the pilings out to sea.

“That really made us go back to the drawing board and look at what we should be doing out there,” said Raives.

Using insurance money and state grants, the city replaced about 500 feet of the 1,615-foot pier with steel, making the structure 10 times stronger than when it stood on the original wood pilings, Raives said.

A grass-roots group known as Pier Into the Future raised nearly $800,000 to maintain the structure.

The group’s founders, longtime Ventura residents Dan and Edna Mills, organized a group of about 16 locals who have sold T-shirts, posters, magnets and other memorabilia.

Even pieces of the pier were up for grabs. Fund-raisers offered each plank of the structure for about $125. About 3,700 buyers received a special title as proof of their ownership.

Considering the pier’s precarious location, however, City Manager Donna Linderos is skeptical that this renovation will be the last. Weather patterns are too unpredictable. “It has a much better chance of surviving,” she said. “But it’s nature, guys.”