City of Monterey looks to revitalize part of Coast Guard Pier

A shuttered part of the Monterey Coast Guard Pier may be brought back to life. City staff are working with the coast guard to develop the area and Thursday they turned to the public.

The city says it’ll still be a few years before updates come to the coast guard pier, but they’re working hard to find the right plan and want the public to stay involved.

The Coast Guard Pier at the Monterey Harbor Breakwater sees a lot of foot traffic, but about 260 feet of it has been condemned.

“We’re looking to kind of come up with a different design and approach the coast guard and see if we can do a development there that would be used by the city of Monterey for public use,” said Harbormaster John Haynes.

So far, city staff has come up with three different proposals. They include rehabilitating what’s already there, creating a pier and dock for side-tying vessels and tearing down what’s there for an all-new facility.

Though officials are still in the early stages of figuring out what to do with this condemned portion of the pier they say the public already has plenty of ideas and input.

“There’s a lot of concern about the width of the channel for boats,” Haynes said, “If there were to be a development to encroach upon that channel which would make it difficult for boats to turn around.”

One of the main goals the city has for the project is making the pier a home for a piece of Central Coast history.

“The Western Flyer is a boat we’d like to see go in there and that has a narrative that fits into the city of Monterey with Ed Ricketts and John Steinbeck chartering that boat in the Sea of Cortez,” Haynes said.

With a lot of different ideas to look at, city staff will try to narrow it down before moving forward.

“We’re gonna kind of regroup and kind of distill those comments and have something to bring back to city council,” Haynes said.

Again, this just the start of the process, the city manager, planning department and public works director are all going to be involved.

You’ll have more chances to weigh in, to find out more about the project’s progress click here.