HUNTINGTON BEACH : Architect Presents Model of Pier Plan

Architect Ron Yeo presented the City Council Tuesday night with a scale model of the city’s proposed new pier, a design that includes a diamond-shaped end.

“The diamond shape at the end of the pier allows an easier flow of traffic around the restaurant that will be built there,” Yeo said. The plans call for a two-story restaurant in an octagon shape.

The original restaurant built in the ‘30s on the end of the pier had such an eight-sided shape, Yeo said. He noted that the city’s goal is to have the new pier incorporate as much historic design as possible using styles from the original pier.

The old pier, now almost completely demolished, was closed to the public in July, 1988, after it suffered extensive damage from storms earlier that year. Work on the new pier began last October, and city officials have said it will be completed by spring, 1992.

The City Council has said it wants the new pier to have a new restaurant, snack shop and bait-and-tackle shop, and also a new lifeguard tower. Models of all those were in the scale model presented to the council Tuesday night.

Yeo said the proposed lifeguard tower would be essentially like the one on the old pier except that it would have an octagonal base. The snack shop and public restroom buildings would both be built in elongated hexagonal shapes.

During a study session before the public meeting, Councilman Jack Kelly asked Yeo about the architect’s proposal for putting tiles depicting birds, fish and ocean-related scenes on the sides of the new pier buildings. Yeo said he proposed the tiles because “the more we can have the pier as a learning experience as well as an artistic experience, the better off we’ll be.”