South beach improvements complete Saturday

Paul Clinton

City workers are tying up the bow on a package of $5.65 million in

beach improvements that they will deliver to residents on Saturday.

Road crews wearing orange suits and hard-hats finished painting

stripes on the newly-minted beach parking lot this week. On Monday, a

crane placed six one-ton concrete benches into their footings.

The improvements also include new beach restrooms, palm trees, better

signage and several artistic touches, including a new surfboard sculpture

known locally as “Surfhenge.”

The project covered the stretch of Pacific Coast Highway from Beach

Boulevard to Huntington Street.

On May 27, the Planning Commission unanimously approved a second round

of improvements for the city’s south beach area. Similar work, under a

$10-million budget, is scheduled to be completed in the area leading

north from Huntington Street to Huntington Pier.

The second round of work won’t begin until later this year.

Surfhenge, which is formally known as Surf Circle because three

fin-less boards sit in a circle of sand, has been so dubbed because the

stacked boards resemble the stone formations at Stonehenge. The

18-foot-high statue was designed by Kathleen and Howard Meehan, who live

in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Two other art elements have been embedded in the concrete near the

sand. The concrete flatwork, in the shape of a seashell and snail shell,

is a colorful pattern with Walt Whitman poetry celebrating the sea and

its creatures.