- November 7, 2024
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With temporary repairs pending on the Flagler Beach pier, the city is looking at long-term options. Should it just fix up the current pier? Replace it entirely? What about fixing the current pier, and then building a new, longer one just north or south of it?
Fishermen who attended an open house meeting at the Flagler Beach City Hall Feb. 28 liked some of the options, such as building an extended pier with an octagonal end cap, potentially with bathrooms, fish cleaning stations and shaded seating areas.
Extending the pier — which has been closed since Hurricane Matthew in October — could lead to better fishing, they said.
"There's a lot of new species we could get, and more of the same species that are already there," said Robert Gamen, 52 and a fisherman from Palm Coast. "If we could make it longer, people would come down and stay overnight."
Lengthening the pier would get it out of the shallow, muddy water that limits the species that fishermen could target, he said.
Staff from the Atkins engineering firm, which the city has contracted with to present options, said the pier could be lengthened up to about 300 feet before the water depth would present a problem, requiring much wider, longer and heavier beams — and more costly equipment to move them into place — and leaving the whole structure less resistant to stress and high-breaking waves.
The longer the pier, the deeper the water, and the deeper the water, the higher the waves would crest.
There's also the possibility, Atkins staff said, that the city could repair its current pier, and then add a longer, concrete pier next to it.
That would solve a couple of problems, preventing the city from being without a pier for the entire duration of the new pier's construction, and also providing a way to accommodate both special events and regular users like fishermen at the same time.
The city would also get to keep its historic, 1928 wood structure; any new pier, said Atkins Project Manager Ken Good, would probably have to be built of concrete to comply with government permitting restrictions.
The pier could still have wood boards along its top, but those would be cosmetic, not structural, and there would likely be "blow-out panels" placed along the pier's length. The blowout panels — wood boards about 4-8 feet in length — would be designed to blow upward like manhole covers if a major wave slammed the pier, reducing stress on the rest of the structure.
A pier operator would have to keep an eye on the weather and evacuate the pier if there was any danger of that, said Atkins Coastal Structural Engineer Dave Conrad.
Flagler Beach City Commissioner Marshall Shupe said he liked the idea of having two piers: the current one, plus a new one built of concrete.
"I personally like the idea of a hardened pier, so that the next group of people doesn't have to worry about it," he said. "We're moving in the right direction, trying to get things taken care of."
City Manager Larry Newsom said he's gotten complaints that work on the pier hasn't been moving fast enough. But the fact that residents haven't seen much happening doesn't mean nothing's happening, he said. The city has been moving forward with a subcontractor to have parts fabricated for the temporary repair.
This city is eager to reopen the pier, which is a major draw for the city and brought in $1,800-$1,900 of revenue a day when it was open, he said.
The city is working to secure Federal Emergency Management Agency grant money to cover the approximately $917,000 required for temporary repairs on the current pier.
The future permanent repair or new pier would be more expensive, Newsom said, and the city doesn't yet know what those costs would be. They would be divided between FEMA, other agencies and the city.
Newsom envisions any future pier as offering more amenities than the current one, possibly with a gazebo at its end that could be used to host events.
"You could have a permitted event," he said. "You could also have it for refuge if a storm came up, because you're way out there."
Newson said the city could also consider some high-tech options, such as adding solar-powered fans for the roof of gazebos or shaded areas.
"All those technologies, we've got to take a look at," he said.
