Santa Cruz staff to launch five-year wharf maintenance plan

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SANTA CRUZ — A recent, unanimous vote from the California Coastal Commission will allow Santa Cruz staff to begin maintenance projects on the wharf that will lead the way to major improvements to preserve the local icon for years to come.

Last week commission members accepted remarks from Santa Cruz Superintendent of Parks and Recreation Travis Beck and Mayor Donna Meyers and, after consulting staff, signed off on an application to begin work restoring the wharf. It came with one condition, that a mutually agreed upon biologist be brought in to study whether the commission’s routine 300-foot bird nesting buffer is reasonable in the circumstance of the municipal landing.

During the next five years, beginning when final revisions to the plan are reviewed and signed off by the commission and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, crews will conduct major and minor improvement projects on the wharf with the intent of ensuring public access to the 107-year-old structure.

“The maintenance permit will allow us to maintain the wharf in its existing configuration,” Beck said, mentioning the council’s passing of the Wharf Master Plan last year. “The improvements we hope to make through the Master Plan will increase the resilience of the structure in a long-term way. The two will really go hand-in-hand to ultimately secure the future of the wharf.”

Where to start

First things first: The piles, or poles, that hold up the 2,700 feet of wharf. According to the city’s application to the Coastal Commission, up to 200 piles will need to be replaced. Around 93 of these piles were classified by engineers contracted by the city in 2014 as “priority replacement piles.” Many are piles that support the wharf’s roadway and parking areas, Beck said. The non-priority piles will be substituted out as plans permit during the five-year period.

Replacing piles, according to the U.S. Army entity that has jurisdiction over the navigable sea, is a major project. Other work that will be done in the coming months, such as roof repairs, building painting and resurfacing projects are also major. The city has to ask for permission through the permit, however, to complete even the most minor projects. Beck provided examples of replacing a broken window or fixing a parking stop.

“We’ve got enormous amounts of work to do out there,” Beck said of moving out from piles and onto the bigger picture. “That’s just the stuff we know about. There are all manners of unexpected work.”

Santa Cruz County’s wharf is exposed, hit by big wind and rainstorms that have wreaked havoc on the wooden infrastructure for decades. This limits the city’s construction schedule, which is why Beck and his team pledged to do as much work outside the bird nesting season as possible and highlighted where nests are often unaffected.

“It doesn’t look like the staff has painted all of the wharves with too broad of a brush but we were able to agree to the nesting bird season condition because we do all of our work in the winter months,” Monterey Harbormaster John Haynes said during the meeting. “Santa Cruz Municipal Wharf is a lot different… As a public member and wharf operator, I am advocating for more flexibility to get real-world conditions in order to protect birds on the wharf (while) allowing projects to be completed.”

Elsewhere, the wharf experiences vandalism. In the past, it has become host to temporarily abandoned projects, a halt that happens when project managers realize there was more to repair than they had planned.

Another obstacle comes not in the form of physical, but fiscal setbacks.

“Due to budget difficulties and staffing reductions, we haven’t been able to maintain our wharf to the extent that we would like. It shows when you go out there,” Beck said. “We are not alone in this fact. If you look up and down the coast, there are other piers and wharves that are partially closed or have been abandoned… that’s not what we want to happen to our wharf.”

Come severe weather or sunny days, the wharf crew charged with maintaining the postcard-worthy destination has enough experience to know how to keep it open during all kinds of construction.

“We’ve figured out how to work around the public. When we are doing the heaviest work, like the pile driving or large decking replacement projects, then a small section of the wharf may be closed off,” Beck said. “I don’t think visitors will say once this permit is issued, ‘Wow, the wharf is under construction, we can’t even go there anymore.’ It’ll be business as usual, really.”

Pondering plans

Through the upkeep phase, Beck and his team dream of some of the future planning outlined in the Master Plan meant to revitalize visitation and business activity at the site. These changes are eligible through grants Parks and Recreation employees are applying for such as California grants around Prop 68, a proposition that encourages designing room for play.

“We want to bring more people out to the wharf and make it easier for people to get out on the water, close to it and create new recreational opportunities,” he said.

Depending on what President Joe Biden’s infrastructure bill looks like once it passes through the committees, there may be even more funding for a revamp, Beck said.

“There is a road on top of it and it could serve, we hope, as a hub in commercial fishing again as it once did. We could have a sea-to-table type of experience,” the superintendent added. “The low-hanging fruit would be engaging with Stagnaro Charters and (bringing them) back to the wharf. We don’t have much concrete in that area yet… There’s a lot going on at the wharf these days.”

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