San Pedro lighthouse renovation is flashing forward

The weather-beaten lighthouse that has stood sentry at the entrance to Los Angeles Harbor for nearly 100 years is getting a fresh start.

Beginning this week, more than $1.8 million will be spent repainting the Angels Gate lighthouse and shoring up its eroding exterior. The lighthouse, which continues to blink out warnings to passing boaters, has been in decline for years, its paint peeling, iron gates rusting and damaged cornice hanging limply.

The remodeling is designed to shore up the lighthouse by metalizing its base and repairing the holes in its stucco tower. Work officially began Monday.

“Everybody that goes in and out of that opening in the channel sees that rust bucket of a lighthouse,” said Ray Olson, a member of the Cabrillo Beach Booster Club, which is managing the project.

“There’ll be people all over the world who will be happy to see that thing cleaned up.”

The renovation is an affirmation for a lighthouse that the Coast Guard had considering tearing down as age and salty ocean breezes took their toll.

Angels Gate was built in 1913 for the modest sum of $36,000, a sturdier version of the wooden structure that hugged the coastline at the time.

It became the country’s first solar-powered lighthouse in 1987 and, though unmanned, continues to flash warnings to sailors as its foghorn squawks.

When the booster club got custody of Angels Gate, it applied for and received funding from the Port of Los Angeles, thanks to a large lawsuit settlement with a Chinese shipping company. But it took more than two years to get the project off the ground.

The lighthouse was last painted in 1989, but Olson said this undertaking is far more comprehensive.

The renovation will begin with supplies being brought to the lighthouse. Then the structure will be encapsulated so that when it’s sandblasted, debris won’t rain into the ocean.

After an engineer tests the quality of the steel, workers will add zinc coating to reinforce it. After the base is complete, they’ll repair and paint the stucco that covers the upper two-thirds of the structure.

For longtimers in San Pedro, there’s nostalgia in the repair job.

“We used to walk out there and fish and dive,” said Gary Dwight, a fourth-generation San Pedro resident and current president of the booster club. “It’s an icon. The freighters and passenger ships —it’s the first thing they see, and right now it’s a travesty.”

The job is expected to be completed by the end of the year — weather permitting.

“They’re willing to work six days a week, 10 hours a day if the weather’s good to make up for the days we won’t have good weather,” Olson said of the contractors.

“We’re kind of praying for a dry winter.”

matthew.stevens@latimes.com

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