Pompano’s new pier reaches halfway mark

Construction expected to be finished by end of March

Pompano Beach’s 54-year-old pier is almost gone and its brand-new replacement is halfway complete, city officials say.

The new pier is expected to be finished by the end of March, said Horacio Danovich, who oversees the city’s capital projects.

Twenty-three of the pier’s 30 concrete spans have been completed, he said. After the remaining spans are built, next come the railings and other features. “It’s right on schedule,” Danovich said. The project was started in late May. Shaping some 9 million pounds of concrete into a pier is a painstaking process, he said. That’s the same weight of nearly 22 Boeing airplanes at maximum takeoff weight. “We build 30 feet every two weeks,” Danovich said.

The walkway is going to be 4 feet higher than the old one, to accommodate sealevel rise and help the structure withstand storm surges.

It’s also going to have several amenities. Offering wireless internet at the pier’s easternmost point will let the public post selfies to social media without cellphone data. Educational features along the walkway will tell people about the fish they might see below.

And to lure people to the seaside, there’s going to be three streaming webcams affixed to the pier – one of them underwater. The popularity of the city’s current beach cameras made it a must to have more viewing opportunities from the pier, said Sandra King, city spokeswoman. “We average 20,000 hits a month on average,” King said.

That’s more than the city’s government meeting pages, she said. “We get calls asking if the camera can be moved east, west, closer, farther away,” King said, laughing.

PHOTOS BY AMY BETH BENNETT/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER Construction is halfway to completion at the Pompano Beach Pier, as seen from the Beach House restaurant. Twenty-three of the 30 concrete spans are finished.

Sherri and Alex Belmar, vacationing from Orlando, take photographs underneath the Pompano Beach Pier.