SANTA CRUZ – After completing a structural assessment of the Santa Cruz Wharf on Dec. 23 after about 150 feet of the structure's south end collapsed into the ocean, the town of Santa Cruz announced Thursday afternoon that the wharf was structurally sound and reopened could change into a public Saturday.

According to the town's release, the Wharf is deemed secure to reopen based on a recently accomplished sonar and engineering assessment conducted by engineering firm Moffatt and Nichol.

RELATED: Why Santa Cruz Harbor was so devastated by storm surge

“Moffat and Nichol were unable to identify any damage to the Wharf's structural capacity outside the area affected by the storm damage and found it to be at the same strength as before the storm,” Santa Cruz Parks and Recreation Director Tony Elliot said. in an announcement. “Arches (substructures) 169, 170 and 171 have some damage and this is the narrower portion that remains at the very end of the wharf and is cordoned off.”

A sonar survey of the seabed revealed that the heavy equipment that fell into the ocean together with the south end of the wharf is at a secure distance from the structure and poses no threat.

“Port contractor Power Engineering Construction worked with Pioneer to conduct a marine sonar scan to locate the heavy equipment that fell into the ocean on December 23,” Santa Cruz City Manager Matt Huffaker said in an announcement. “The three pieces of heavy equipment were successfully located. A boat washed up on the beach has been secured and the crane and a skid steer are currently in the sea a safe distance from the wharf and will be marked with a buoy tomorrow to alert others to the locations.”

RELATED: Capitola Wharf survives first major test from Mother Nature since reopening

To have a good time the reopening, the town will host a ceremony at 10 a.m. on the Wharf Stage Area. The ceremony is public and can include statements from Santa Cruz city leadership. Please note that vehicle traffic shouldn’t be permitted beyond Marini's Candies and access to Stagnaro's is restricted to pedestrians only.

“We understand that Wharf business owners are anxious to resume operations for the public,” said City of Santa Cruz Mayor Fred Keeley. “Please join us for the reopening ceremony to support our local businesses during these challenging times. Let’s work together to keep Santa Cruz businesses strong.”

For more information and updates, see The city's social media page.

Originally published: January 3, 2025 at 5:25 am PST

CAPITOLA — Three months after its highly anticipated reopening, the Capitola Wharf has passed its first major test from Mother Nature, with mostly positive results, based on town's top infrastructure official.

After nailing a couple of dozen wood panels near the middle section and confirming the integrity of the 167-year-old structure, town's wharf reopened Monday after being closed for per week. Capitola Public Works Director Jessica Kahn explained that the local landmark was closed early last week in anticipation of the large waves that tore off the top of the Santa Cruz Municipal Wharf, causing greater than $20 million in damage within the port of Santa Cruz.

RELATED: Protection measures for nesting seagulls (amongst other typical California problems) delayed repairs on the Santa Cruz wharf

Kahn said a pole from the Capitola Wharf was moved because one other pole ripped from the Santa Cruz Wharf toppled over and struck one in all its many cornerstones before buckling.

“We feel like this was the first real test we had after reopening the wharf,” Kahn noted, adding that her team was “really happy” with the way in which the brand new features performed during of atmospheric attack.

“It’s definitely something that’s basically happened to us since the city got the wharf,” Kahn said. “This is not unexpected; This is something we deal with more or less every year. So for us it’s not a big deal.”

As a part of the $10.6 million, the entire wharf's decking and railing were replaced Capitola Wharf Resilience Project that was accomplished this summer. The project, a decade within the making, moved into full swing in 2023 after the wharf was ripped in two by one other raging flood and days of torrential rain. The middle section of the wharf, which buckled in 2023 and is most vulnerable to heavy waves, was expanded from 20 feet to 36 feet as a part of the reconstruction work. This also included the erection of 150 latest and substitute fiber-reinforced plastic posts, that are rather more durable than traditional wood legs.

“The new posts have held up really well. There’s really no harm to them at all,” Kahn said. “We are very happy with their performance up front.”

While the wharf in Capitola survived the recent onslaught relatively unscathed, its northern counterpart, the Santa Cruz Municipal Wharf, didn’t fare as well. A roughly 150-foot section at the top of the pier under construction in Santa Cruz collapsed into the ocean days before the Christmas holiday and the coastal structure stays closed indefinitely.

According to Kahn, the financial burden on Capitola was also relatively low when it got here to the wharf. Just a few members of town's public works crew took to the patio within the brisk Monday morning air and nailed the disjointed boards into place before reopening the local landmark to the general public just because the sun broke through the misty cloud cover.

Originally published: December 31, 2024 at 5:55 am PST

SANTA CRUZ – Engineers continued to look at the structural integrity of the Santa Cruz Wharf on Tuesday, a day after white waves ripped a part of the 110-year-old wharf into Monterey Bay.

Santa Cruz officials didn’t provide a timetable for reopening town's landmark or any of the restaurants on it, citing turbulent surf that continued to pound considered one of the longest wood wharves on the West Coast. Meanwhile, parts of the wharf — in addition to the toilets that after stood near its western end — continued to rock and slosh offshore.

“There are many, many, multiple dynamic layers to what is being evaluated, from the beaches to the wharf structure itself,” said Mike Godsey, head of town’s parks and recreation department, adding that “public safety is obviously the primary goal .” ”

“Most likely it will be a long process,” he added. “Time will tell.”

The collapse added to an extended history of battering ocean waves and destroyed landmarks along the Monterey Bay coast known for its pristine beauty. It also brought recent dangers for restaurants and small businesses along the favored Santa Cruz attraction, as restaurants were forced to shut unexpectedly – and indefinitely – through the holiday season.

“Commercially, it will have a big impact,” said Duf Fischer, former president and adviser to the Santa Cruz Area Chamber of Commerce.

The collapse occurred around 12:45 p.m. Monday when about 150 feet of the wharf tore into the bay as powerful waves overwhelmed the structure. A public toilet and a part of the wharf that after housed the Dolphin Restaurant broke away and started floating nearby.

Due to wreck from a storm in December 2023, the world had been closed for repairs and construction. As a result, crews had already demolished The Dolphin restaurant, inbuilt the Sixties, to make room for repairs to missing and damaged poles. Construction was expected to be accomplished in March 2025.

Three staff inspecting the wharf fell into the choppy ocean waves when the tip of the wharf broke in two. Two of them were rescued by lifeguards, while the third person was capable of swim to safety, officials said.

The collapse surprised people eating and sightseeing on Monday and compelled them to flee while rescuers went into the water to rescue construction staff who had fallen in. Cody Wright, 29, of Folsom, remembered the flickering lights inside Stagnaro Bros. when he visited Former employees get a glimpse contained in the decades-old establishment. Then all of them ran outside.

“I looked down and there’s a bobcat dredge in the ocean,” Wright said. He watched in awe as the lavatory that was once on the dock floated to the mouth of the San Lorenzo River. The sight was particularly astonishing considering he had seen stronger storms hit the wharf – including one last yr that left the water within the Stagnaro Bros. aquarium sloshing “like a bathtub.”

“I think the waves hit it just right,” he said of the wharf collapse.

The destructive waves gave the impression to be the results of two powerful low-pressure systems within the Pacific Ocean, each of which had stalled recently, producing howling winds of over 60 miles per hour that kicked up ocean waves for 1000’s of miles, Golden Gate Weather said Service meteorologist, Jan Null. With nothing to push these low-pressure systems out of the ocean, winds off the coast of central California on Monday created sea waves that peaked every 20 to 26 seconds. “Normally such swellings are registered every 10 seconds,” said Null.

For many, Monday's collapse was nothing in need of “shocking.”

Opened in 1914, the Santa Cruz structure became the longest wood wharf on the West Coast by necessity since the waters of Monterey Bay near the Santa Cruz coast are shallow, said Ross Gibson, 69, historian for the Santa Cruz Sentinel. A railway line was also built on the wharf, which became the central berth for steamships to anchor and unload cargo and passengers.

After World War II, the wharf was transformed right into a tourist and dining attraction in addition to a hub for fishermen.

“It’s a main street in the middle of the ocean — a place where we enjoy our interaction with Monterey Bay,” Gibson said.

“For many years it was the center of the Italian fishing community, which gradually emerged after Cottardo Stagnaro left the ship as a cabin boy and discovered how much he loved this place,” Gibson added, referring to the patriarch and his family later opened and operates Stagnaro Bros. “It's a great loss for the entire community because we don't know how long these restaurants will be able to sustain themselves.”

Nevertheless, Null warned tourists and beachgoers to avoid the coast in the subsequent few days as swells and swells are still expected there.

“The pattern doesn’t really change,” Null said. “Stay away from the water. Think about how far away you want to be and make sure it’s twice as far away from the water.”

Originally published: December 24, 2024 at 3:35 pm PST

SANTA CRUZ – The Dolphin Restaurant, which has called Santa Cruz Wharf home for greater than 50 years, was demolished piece by piece Wednesday to make way for needed repairs to the damaged south end of the greater than 100-year-old picket structure.

“The reason for the demolition of the Dolphin is that numerous pilings beneath the restaurant were damaged or lost during the storms,” said Santa Cruz Development Manager Norm Daly at the positioning of the demolition. “It is impossible to replace these piles without removing the building.”

RELATED: Capitola Wharf's 'grand reopening' celebrates rebuilding from catastrophic 2023 storm

Daly explained that the city-owned constructing the Dolphin called home was in-built the Nineteen Sixties and is “functionally obsolete.”

“It was really about time something happened there anyway,” Daly said. “This was a great opportunity to remove the building and then repair the pilings underneath.”

Massive waves inundated the coast in December 2023, causing town of Santa Cruz to briefly close the complete Santa Cruz Wharf and a number of other beaches. Although the wharf reopened later the identical day, the viewing holes and the Dolphin Restaurant at the top of the wharf were closed until further notice and remain closed attributable to damage.

With the constructing removed, completion of the repair work is now in sight and is anticipated to be accomplished in March 2025. After the constructing is demolished and the positioning is cleared, construction crews can begin replacing about 60 piles.

“The number of missing or damaged items we found was slightly higher (over 60),” Daly said. “But these piles were adjacent to intact piles and it was determined that they did not need to be replaced and the structural integrity of the wharf would continue to be complete.”

Daly, together with other members of the media, accompanied the Sentinel behind the fence at the top of the wharf on Wednesday to look at the demolition in motion, drawing attention to the damaged and bowed areas on the east and west sides of the wharf.

“This damaged area is similar to the other side,” Daly said, pointing to the east side of the wharf. “This is a temporary repair to support this section of the wharf. Once the posts are gone, there is no longer any support under the decking, so this metal I-beam bridges the distance where the posts are missing. And the iron rods coming up from the bottom actually accommodate a bend, which is a large part of the scaffolding. We eliminate the bend and prevent it from sagging any further.”

Daly explained that the wharf, which celebrates its a hundred and tenth birthday this December, has about 4,400 pilings and 180 arches keeping it afloat. He identified that every bend is numbered, with the primary bend near the doorway of the structure and the last bend (183) at the top. He mentioned that longshoremen use the assigned curved numbers to speak problems on and under the structure.

The contractor chargeable for driving the brand new piles into the seabed is Power Engineering Construction. Grace Bowman, the corporate's project engineer, explained how construction crews will drive the roughly 60- to 70-foot-long picket columns into the seabed.

“We’re going to bring a crane here and position it so it doesn’t fall through the dock,” Bowman said. “There’s a set of lines and a hammer. They pick up the stack (with the crane) and put it through the hole in the deck where it belongs. You put the hammer on, and it’s a diesel-powered impact hammer that drives it into the ground.”

Wharf Manager Britt Hoberg and Santa Cruz Wharf Recreation Coordinator Annalize Bryant took the Sentinel and other media members under the wharf on a small boat Wednesday to survey the damage. Bryant explained that she was working on the wharf last winter when the storms destroyed and damaged quite a few pilings.

“We were near the edge where the damage occurred and were discussing the plan to close the end of the wharf when we heard this loud crack,” Bryant said. “Nothing collapsed, but it was a sound I never want to hear again.”

“You hear a lot of noises out here,” Hoberg added. “But you know when you’re really feeling bad.”

When construction is complete next spring, the dolphin is probably not back, but community members can rest assured that the favored sea lion viewing holes will remain. A series of community outreach meetings over the following six to nine months will determine what will probably be populated on the south end of the wharf master plan once construction is complete, in line with economic development asset manager David McCormic, who also serves as director .

“In addition, in January, the Santa Cruz City Council approved the revised wharf master plan, which outlines the future of the wharf,” McCormic said. “There was a concept in the plan for a heritage building, but that was scrapped in favor of a public process to determine what happens next out here.”

McCormic said town of Santa Cruz received about $6.9 million from the California Coastal Conservancy in February for projects within the Wharf Master Plan.

“We will be finalizing construction plans for a new multi-use path along the east side – the East Promenade – building new viewing areas, widening the end of the wharf and relocating parking garages to reduce traffic and create an entrance.”

McCormic mentioned other projects including two latest boat docks on the structure, one for small vessels and the opposite for larger vessels similar to the O'Neill Sea Odyssey and the Chardonnay charter boats. At the southern end of the wharf, McCormic expects to have a industrial component, similar to a restaurant, in addition to “recreational and cultural improvements.”

“There could be a visitor center,” McCormic said. “We could think about moving the surf museum. It’s a process and the community will determine what happens next.”

Originally published: October 25, 2024 at 5:59 am

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