Santa Cruz city officials said it could be weeks before the iconic Municipal Wharf can reopen following the collapse of a 150-foot section at the end of the pier on Monday. And they said it will take even longer to determine if it makes sense to rebuild the portion that fell into Monterey Bay amid heavy surf. In the meantime, officials said at a Friday news conference, they are working on ways to assist those affected.
“We have over two dozen businesses that really depend on their livelihoods operating on the wharf, particularly during the holiday season,” said City Manager Matt Huffaker. “Those businesses have about 400 employees that depend, as part of their livelihood, on these businesses reopening. However, we cannot reopen the wharf until we know that it's safe to do so.”
Huffaker said that engineers are working to make sure that the rest of the 110-year-old wharf is structurally safe before it can reopen. He also said that debris from the pier is showing up as far as 10 miles away, complicating the already complicated cleanup.
Crews are already working to remove the restroom building that ended up near the mouth of the San Lorenzo River, more than a mile away. Several pieces of heavy equipment, including a construction crane, ended up on the seafloor, officials said. They said retrieving those items is a top priority.
Far less clear is whether it will ultimately make sense to rebuild the section of the pier that collapsed.
“I think that is the question of the day,” Huffaker said. “I don't think we can speak with any confidence at this point as to whether rebuilding this section of the work is feasible.”
He noted that the swell that struck the wharf on Monday was the largest in 30 years, and that ocean wave action is only getting more intense due to climate change.
“Nobody's made a decision yet, but it would be irresponsible if we didn't ask the question, what is the right thing to do?” said Santa Cruz Mayor Fred Keeley.
The portion of the wharf that collapsed was already undergoing a $4 million repair project following storm damage last year. Huffaker said the city had plans as far back as 2015 to strengthen the wharf against these types of storms, but lawsuits by preservationists delayed them.
“We'll never know for sure, but we do know that the delays of our master plan, largely due to lawsuits against the city that slowed down those important investments, have left our wharf more vulnerable,” Huffaker said.
But an attorney behind the most prominent of those lawsuits, filed by a group calling itself “Don’t Morph the Wharf,” disputed the idea that it had anything to do with Monday’s collapse.
“The lawsuit by Don’t Morph the Wharf did not affect or exacerbate the current problems with Wharf maintenance that resulted in collapse,” said the organization's attorney, Susan Brandt Hawley, in an email.
In 2020, the group sued to block portions of the city’s master plan for the Wharf including a large new building at the end of the wharf, a new walkway along the western side of the pier, and the removal of holes to view the sea lions that live under the wharf.
In 2022, a judge ruled that parts of the city’s plan violated the California Environmental Quality Act, but said that the city could proceed with maintenance and repairs. Earlier this year, the city agreed to drop the walkway and the new building from the project, and Don’t Morph the Wharf dropped its lawsuit.
As for the sea lion viewing holes that the group sought to preserve, they were destroyed in Monday’s collapse.
