Despite current delays with the supply of replacement planks and decorative archways, White Rock’s pier is still on target to be re-opened to the public by Aug. 31.
“It looks good,” Jim Gordon, the city’s engineering and operations manager, told council at Monday night’s meeting (July 22) in an update on repairs to the pier, seriously damaged during a windstorm storm at high tide last Dec. 20, which resulted in the collapse of a 100-foot section of the structure.
“As most people can see from the shore, the piles are in, the pile-caps are on and the deck is in place,” Gordon said. “We put the stringers in recently and we’re actually working on some of the railing.”
He said that while the project is on schedule for an Aug. 30 completion, there will be a short lull in work while the contractor awaits delivery of the new planking for the pier.
In his full written report to council, Gordon notes that plank installation should be ready to begin in mid-August, lasting approximately one week.
“The planks are not arriving as quickly as the contractor would have liked,” Gordon said. “But we’re still on-schedule for Aug. 30.”
He also noted that there will be a delay with the installation of one of the pier’s metal decorative arches.
“But we can re-open the pier without that arch – it’s been ordered but it takes it takes a long time to complete that.
“We are on-track, we’re under-budget.”
Gordon added that total ‘change orders’ (city-requested modifications to items budgeted in original plans – standard for a project this size) currently stand at only two per cent of the value of the project.
“That is indeed good news for ourselves as a council, and certainly for the entire community,” Mayor Darryl Walker commented in response to Gordon’s report.