Long Branch Officials Consider Rebuilding Oceanfront Pier

SOURCE: APP.com · PUBLISHED: June 17, 2010 · AUTHOR: Carol Gorga Williams

Long Branch - A 141-foot bow-loading ferry carrying a maximum passenger load of 399 passengers could service a new city pier 350 days a year - the number of days the seas produce waves of eight feet or less - according to the findings of a N.Y. state engineering firm examining the feasibility of rebuilding an oceanfront pier here.

Malcolm McLaren of the McLaren Engineering Group, West Nyack, N.Y., explained that his firm had gotten wave sizes from a buoy in the ocean off the coast of Long Branch and found that for an average of 350 days each year, waves do not exceed 8 feet.

But 8 feet is not insignificant, and ocean ferries are still relatively rare, so the way to minimize dangers is to construct a breakwater at the end of the pier - one proposal is to allow the pier to form an inverted L-shape in which the breakwater would effectively reduce the wave height to two feet.

The wave height would be reduced within the harbor that engineers would create which would be large enough to allow the vessels to back up and head out again to open sea but would allow passengers to disembark in seas of 2 feet or less.

"The other 15 days you can take the train or if the weather is that bad, you probably shouldn't be going to work anyway," said McLaren of the proposal, which seeks to offer ferry service to Battery Park in New York, although it could also offer travel south.

McLanre reviewed this idea Wednesday at a "charrette," which Mayor Adam Schneider joked was "a fancy French word" for a "dog-and-pony show" with public input. McLaren, Schneider and various engineers reviewed the progress they have made on the pier proposal and then allowed time for those interested to break into some nine different groups and propose ideas or ask questions related to various elements of the pier project.

The comments will be gathered into a report to be distributed later and will be featured on either a website of a Facebook page that would allow for more back-and-forth, Schneider said.

Schneider said it is vital to the city to rebuild the pier, the latest of which was destroyed by fire in 1987. It was the last of five ocean piers, beginning in 1880, all of which offered ferry service, officials said.

"We know it is doable," said Schneider, noting officials reviewed 10 to 12 proposals before settling on McLaren, an expert in marine construction. "But now we have to prove it is doable in 2010."

The mayor said that if Long Branch builds a pier with ferry service, it will enhance city property values and expand the city's attractiveness as a destination. McLaren estimates 900 people would ride a ferry from Long Branch and the trip would take 55 minutes, as opposed to 50 minutes from Highlands and 40 minutes from the Belford section of Middletown.

"We're taking that to the next step," said engineer Richard Cook of a 2009 report prepared by the Thompson Design Group that proposed a three-story pier to be built in stages. McLaren wants to build a pier with a minimum environmental impact and with cutting-edge green technology. Residents are being asked whether they would support a single wind turbine to power the pier, for example.