City Presents Public With ‘Fantasy Pier’ for Ocean Beach Designed Without Consideration of Costs

Last “Workshop” Under-Attended Partly Due to Refusal of Union-Tribune to Announce It

By Geoff Page

The City of San Diego held the final Ocean Beach Pier Renewal workshop, concerning the eventual replacement of the San Diego Municipal Fishing Pier, Saturday, October 26, at the Liberty Station conference center. This event was not nearly as well attended as the previous four workshops. The Union Tribune was partly responsible for that — and ironically, so was the City.

It seems word of this last pier workshop did not get out as well as it had for prior events. The OB Rag published the event information ahead of time on for over a week before the event.

The Union Tribune not only did not carry any advance notice of the event, the newspaper actually refused to run the notice when requested. Jon Schmid, of Cook and Schmid, the consulting firm that has handled the public outreach efforts, confirmed that the UT was asked to run an advance notice and refused, with no explanation.

The City’s failure to send out an all-encompassing email blast also did not help. Everyone who attended any of the workshops was asked to to sign in and provide an email address. This writer signed in four previous times — but did not receive an email about this event.

The result was an under-attended event compared to the large crowds that came to the earlier workshops.

Pix#1 and #2 showing crowd

Using the word “workshop” for this event was also a bit misleading. The previous four workshops were just that, gatherings where the public and the city’s consultants interacted to create a pier design that contained what the public wanted.

At the opening of the event, Elif Cetin, Assistant Director Engineering and Capital Projects, explained that this “workshop” was meant to be informational only.

The City and the consultants were there to present and discuss the final design based on all of the workshops and surveys that had taken place previously.

After Cetin’s opening remarks, the consultants gave a brief PowerPoint presentation that is accessible here

The slideshow described the purpose of the event:

• Provide a design update with additional information about the detailed features of the pier
• Celebrate what we have created together
• Share strategies for key components that will continue to be developed in future phases
• Public Art
• Education, Interpretation, and Signage
• Sustainability Approaches
• Grow your collective understanding of the project and future phases

One of the main interests of the audience was the timeline for a new pier. Here is what was shown:

This schedule is probably reliable up until the beginning of 2027 because all of the activities prior to that date, through “Agency Permits,” have funding. The project received an $8.4 million state grant that is covering everything up to construction. Any dates after that will be entirely dependent on when the money to build the pier is available.

The only way to do justice to the vagueness of the “Funding Strategy” is to quote it directly from the PowerPoint presentation.

Funding Strategy

• Targeting Diverse Funding Sources
  • Estimated Program Cost: $170-190 Million
  • Includes current $8.5 Million grant for design
  • Demolition of existing structure
• Construction of the new pier
  • Investigating several opportunities
  • Federal, State, and Local Sources
  • Grant Programs
  • Public Private Partnership Opportunities

During the initial presentation, one consultant stated that the “city has taken proactive steps concerning funding.” When questioned later about what specific proactive steps the city was taking, the answer was that we would have to ask the city.

Cetin did not provide any information about the funding search effort; it was not a subject for the meeting.  Considering that paying for the pier is a major concern for everyone, it would have been encouraging to have heard some specifics about what the city has done and is doing to seek money. If anything.

The estimate for the final design is $170 – 190 million. When the story of the pier’s woes was seen in an engineering report first exposed here in The Rag, that report estimated the cost of a new pier, just like the existing pier, at $60 million for construction only. Add another $40 million for everything else, to be very conservative, and the price of rebuilding what we have, at $100 million, is much less than the projected budget.

The City never apprised the public of the cost of anything the public was shown and asked to choose from as preferences. The choices were all made based more or less on aesthetic appeals, what looked nice, what was desired. The result is this very expensive final design that is an architect’s dream.

This writer asked Ms. Cetin why none of the information provided to the public when making choices about the pier included costs. The answer was difficult to understand for several reasons. Ms. Cetin was very hoarse and has something of an accent.

The answer was a lot of words that, summed up, sounded like the city and its consultants were aware of costs when making their decisions with that in mind. In other words, the public did not need to be concerned with that. This response seemed to ignore that people make decisions like this regularly in their daily lives.

If people were given a choice between a Bentley, a Ford Expedition, and a Volkswagen Bug, with no consideration of cost, everyone would be driving away in a Bentley. If they were then told the costs, and told they had to pay for the cars, most everyone would be driving a Bug or an Expedition.

The result of all the workshops and public participation is a pier design that is now much less a “fishing” pier than it is an imagined public space designed for more than fishing. The original purpose of the pier was fishing, hence the correct name, the San Diego Municipal Fishing Pier. The new design will clearly also accommodate fishing, but fishing is taking a backseat. The added expense, evidenced by the new estimate, is largely due to all the extras, having nothing to do with fishing.

Convincing public agencies to cough up money to replace a fishing pier will be difficult with so many competing priorities. Convincing those same agencies to fund what can only be described as a “fantasy pier” will be much harder. But, perhaps not, if something that appeared for the first time in pier documents becomes a funding source, “Public Private Partnership Opportunities.”

Simply put, “Public Private Partnerships,” or PPPs, involve surrendering use of public property to a private enterprise. The private business agrees to do something for the public agency in exchange for exclusive use of public property.

The easiest example of a PPP is at the foot of Broadway on Harbor. Much of the large Navy property was given to developers in exchange for a new building for the Navy’s on-site requirements. The developers constructed the Navy’s building first and then began development on the rest of the site. If the city uses a PPP, we will no longer have a completely public pier.

The question of total cost is important if it affects how the pier is to be funded. What if the public had these two choices:  a basically functional, publicly funded pier or the present beautiful design that could only be accomplished by giving some of the pier away. Considering how far along this process is with the final design, there may not be a choice.

One disappointment with the design, for surfers, is the pier spans. The pier was built in the middle of a reef to beach left that starts on the south side. A surfer wanting to ride the whole wave, starting on the south side, has to shoot the pier between the pilings. While this is doable, a mistake can result in a nasty meeting with a barnacle covered concrete pier.

It was hoped that the new pier could have some wider spans making it safer to surf under the pier. According to the consultants, there will be no such accommodation to surfing. The main reason given was that the city did not want to encourage surfing under the pier.

Considering that the new pier is designed to be much higher than the existing pier, a few extra wide spans would allow this to be a safe activity. Surfers will shoot the pier anyway. The consultant did say the spans would be a little wider than those of the existing pier, but that is all.

To see a comprehensive collection of pictures of the event, taken by Charles Landon, go here,

Landon also put together a video of the Saturday event that can be seen here 

Here are some additional photos Geoff took: