COASTAL OBSERVER

Construction should be underway to rebuild the Pawleys Pier when the fourth anniversary of the hurricane that destroyed a third of the structure arrives in September.

It will take 14 to 18 months replace the 820-foot-long pier, the contractor told Pawleys Island Town Council this week.

“We can all appreciate that the pier is somewhat iconic to the town of Pawleys Island,” Mayor Brian Henry said. “We want to make sure it’s an aesthetic fit for the island.”

The pier’s demise during Hurricane Ian was also iconic, captured on video by owners who stayed at Pawleys Pier Village when the Category 1 storm made landfall on North Island. The east end of the pier broke loose and floated away around 1 p.m. on Sept. 30. A tattered American flag was still flying over the fishing pavilion.

“Our intent is to build the pier back in the identical footprint,” said Wade Warr, president of Pawleys Pier Village Homeowners Association, which owns the pier. “The end will look like the old one did with a light pole right on the end and a pavilion.”

The pier was insured for $5.5 million and the HOA began making plans to replace it right after the storm. It got state permits to make soil borings the next summer, solicited proposals for designs and hoped to start rebuilding in 2024.

It wasn’t until the end of that year that Pawleys Pier Village applied for state and federal permits for the replacement. Board members said it was just a lengthy process.

Town Council asked for updates, and some members were concerned that the new pier could be made of concrete or steel rather than wood.

“It will be a wooden pier,” Warr said, confirming what other board members previously told the town.

The only possible change may be in the decking. Rather than a wood deck, the HOA is considering a fiber-reinforced polymer or FRP deck with a grate pattern. “If it’s not cost prohibitive,” Warr said.

The material will make the pier more resilient, said E.B. Pannkuk, the engineer for the project, the seventh ocean pier he has worked on.

The decking “is why ocean piers fail, why they fall down,” he said.

Aside from causing splinters, the nails lift out of the wooden deck. They are frequently replaced with screws, which means when waves rise under the pier the decking is more firmly attached and lift the structure.

With the FRP grating, Pannkuk said, “the biggest thing is that any wave that hits it will pass straight through.”

Council Member Paul Groce noted that the town’s development ordinance requires that decks be made of wood.

“I hate for us to set a precedent,” he said. “It’s part of the Pawleys look.”

The decking won’t be visible to people looking at the pier from the side because it will have wood trim, Pannkuk said.

But it will be visible to people who walk under the pier. He said at Oak Island, N.C., a portion of the public fishing pier was rebuilt with FRP grating, but there was concern that people would be uncomfortable looking down into the water.

Pannkuk also told council that the grating will let sunlight through so it will have less impact on dune plants.

The demolition and reconstruction will be done from land as far as the tide allows, then crews will work “top down” from portions of the old pier, said Clint Roberson of S&C Construction, the Wilmington, N.C. company that will do the work. The exact sequence is still being worked out, he told the council.

Council Member Mark Hawn asked how the work will impact beachgoers.

“We’ve been down this road before as far as closing the beach down,” Police Chief Mike Fanning said. “People don’t want to listen.”

“There will be a time when they can’t be there,” Roberson said.

But that will be limited to when equipment and material are being moved, he added.

The pier will have three sections, according to its state permit application. A 12-foot wide section runs 194 feet from Pawleys Pier Village toward the ocean. The next section is 490 feet long and 24 feet wide. The final section is 116 feet long and 48 feet wide.

There are fewer than 200 pilings that will need to be driven, Pannkuk said.

It’s possible that they can be vibrated into place, Roberson said.

If they need to be hammered into place, that will be done in stages and early in the process, Pannkuk said.

“It’s not 14 months of pile driving,” he told the council.

“We’re definitely going to need to communicate that to somebody,” Hawn said. 

NOAA Fisheries is still reviewing the project and is due to submit comments to the Army Corps of Engineers in July, Warr said. The Corps should issue its permit by August and the state permit will follow. The project will then need a building permit from the town.

“We’re still kind of riding the clutch” on a start date, Roberson said. “We’ll at least have everything ready when the permits do arrive.”