Quick Take:
The Santa Cruz Municipal Wharf likely faces weeks of closure after storm damage destroyed a 150-foot section. Officials are exploring aid for affected businesses and workers and debating whether to rebuild the section that collapsed Monday.
It will likely take weeks, at least, for the Santa Cruz Municipal Wharf to reopen for business after massive swells caused a portion of the historic pier to collapse, city officials said Friday.
There are two major efforts that must be completed before the wharf can reopen, Santa Cruz City Manager Matt Huffaker told a news conference Friday morning. Crews must remove the construction equipment that fell into the ocean and engineers still have to complete an assessment of the wharf’s structural integrity.
He said the city hopes to complete those two processes in the coming days. Crews have already begun removing the bathroom building that fell into the ocean Monday when the end of the wharf collapsed and which, as of Friday morning, was lodged in the mouth of the San Lorenzo River. However, the city still doesn’t have an estimated reopening date for the wharf. “Our hope is weeks,” Huffaker said.
Beyond a tourist attraction, the wharf is also a large contributor to the local economy, with 20 businesses operating on the site that employ about 400 people.
With those livelihoods now shrouded in uncertainty, city parks and recreation director Tony Elliot said the city is working with business owners to allow them access to their property and is looking to support employees of those businesses while the city-owned wharf remains closed. That includes working with Community Bridges and Community Foundation Santa Cruz County to provide financial support to workers. The city is also discussing a “potential offset on the rent” for business owners affected by the closure, Huffaker added.
The city declared an emergency on Tuesday, opening the door for state and federal support, Huffaker told Lookout. He said city officials have already been in contact with the Federal Emergency Management Agency for assistance.
The huge waves that broke off a 150-foot section of the wharf on Monday was “the largest swell event that we’ve seen in 30 years,” Elliot said, adding that crews “did everything in their ability and power to secure the site.” Huffaker said that forecasts ultimately underestimated the severity of the swell event.
Huffaker added that the city doesn’t know yet if it’s feasible, or even appropriate, to rebuild the lost section of wharf, especially given the higher frequency of storms hitting the region in recent winters.
“We’ve got some hard conversations and some hard decisions we’re going to have to make as we move out of this initial emergency response phase,” he said, adding that “longer term, we will be having a lot of discussions with our city council and our outside experts about what this new normal looks like when it comes to the work and our new coastal reality.”
Mayor Fred Keeley said it was too early to commit to rebuilding the section of the wharf that broke off. “To say we’re simply going to put it back is, I think, much more risky and, frankly, irresponsible than having a very serious conversation,” he said.
The section of the wharf that collapsed was under construction. The city has had plans to reinforce the wharf since 2015. A Wharf Master Plan, put together after a 2011 tsunami, included a proposal to add a walkway on the western side and a landmark building at the edge of the pier. The goal is to prevent the wharf from being damaged by debris and to boost tourism.
The proposal faced strong opposition, including a 2022 lawsuit from the group Don’t Morph the Wharf that argued the plan did not address possible environmental consequences, including blocking sea lion viewing areas.
Those delays likely contributed to the wharf’s structural failure on Monday, Huffaker said. “We have projects that have been ready to go that could have prevented this most recent collapse,” he said. “We’ll never know for sure, but we do know that the delays of our master plan, largely due to lawsuits against the city, slowed down those important investments and have left our wharf more vulnerable.”
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