Infamous Oil Transfer Station to Become Cal Poly Marine Lab

Unocal Corp. is donating its former oil pier in once-contaminated Avila Beach to Cal Poly San Luis Obispo for use as a marine science center, university and Unocal officials announced Thursday.

The gift of the concrete and steel pier is valued at $18 million, they said. And it is accompanied by a pledge from the oil and gas company to establish a $3.5-million endowment to cover maintenance and operation.

“We’re very excited,” said Mark Moline, an assistant professor of biological sciences at Cal Poly who will oversee the new marine center. “It’s an incredible opportunity for us.”

The gift also marks a Cinderella-style transformation for the old pier, which was once the terminus of the Unocal pipelines that ran beneath the Central Coast community’s tiny downtown. In 1989, in one of the worst environmental disasters in California history, thousands of gallons of crude oil were discovered to have leaked under the town, precipitating a massive cleanup and rebuilding project.

Construction of Avila’s new downtown was launched this year.

Now, the onetime oil transfer station will be home to the only marine laboratory of its kind between Santa Barbara and Monterey, officials said, and the only one in the nation to focus on undergraduate education.

Moline said the facility, together with a new Navy-funded underwater vehicle, will allow Cal Poly students and faculty to embark on a host of research projects, from a study of the Central Coast area’s currents to the light-giving properties of phytoplankton.

He said the university will start using the new center in January, after renovation of a two-story building on the end of the pier into classroom, laboratory and office space.

The gift, the result of a two-year negotiation, is the latest in a series of donations from Unocal to Cal Poly, which has also been involved in helping with the town’s cleanup, officials said.