Flagler Beach Secures All FEMA Funds for New Pier, Construction of $14 Million Replacement Begins June 16

“YEPPIE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

That was Christine Novak’s sign-off to her brief email to Flagler Beach’s city commissioners and staff at 2 p.m. today as the project manager informed everyone: “It has been a long road,  as of 12:49 today our city has secured all FEMA / FDEP funds, and we are clear for construction!  Our start is Monday June 16th !!!!”

Or rather, demolition: that’ll be the first part of the pier project as the structure first built when Calvin Coolidge was finishing his presidency, battered, lengthened and lobotomized many times since by storms is disassembled but for its first 113 feet and replaced by a 714-foot concrete pier (827 feet when combined with the vestigial segment). 

“I am relieved and excited for the construction to begin on rebuilding the pier, which is the face of Flagler County,” Flagler Beach Commission Chair James Sherman said, stressing that he meant to say Flagler County, not just Flagler Beach. “These are truly exciting times in Flagler Beach.

The project is expected to take 18 months, barring expected severe storms, so in the best of worlds, it would be completed in time for the city’s celebration ushering in 2027. The pier has been closed since October 2022, when Hurricane Ian lashed the coup de grâce.

Somewhere, Larry Newsom is smiling. 

“Since before Hurricane Matthew tore up the pier in 2016, it was Larry Newsom’s dream to replace the pier with a GRAND new concrete one similar to the one in Pensacola, but longer,” City Commissioner Rick Belhumeur, who had been close to the late city manager, texted. Newsom died in August 2020 at 56. 

“After hurricane Matthew, Larry was successful in securing $10 million towards the replacement of the then torn up Pier,” Belhumeur wrote. “More hurricanes came and other priorities prevailed so we had to beg for an extension. Finally, everything was in place but time was running out on that extension so we had to ask for another. That was also part of this delay. But now that we have met all the requirements and the funding is in place, it’s “full speed ahead” and I’ll be looking for something commemorating Larry’s dream!”

The Federal Emergency Management Administration awarded the city $10 million. The state legislature in 2023 awarded $4.5 million for the project, enabling the city to spare its budget. Lats year the city commission approved  a revolving loan of $22 million as a bridge to finance the construction before the city is reimbursed. 

The engineering and consulting firm Moffatt and Nichol designed the new pier, which will be 10 feet higher than its predecessor to account for rising seas. The city commission in January signed off on a $14.1 million contract with Beckley, W.Va.-based Vecellio and Grogan to demolish and rebuild the pier. The June start time is behind original projections that had demolition starting last November, shortly after the completion of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ beach renourishment of more than 3 miles of beachfront from North 6th Street to South 28th Street. 

For the city, the pier reconstruction will be the last leg of a long haul of major projects that have been hammering at the city’s patience for the past two years, with the just-completed Compass Hotel downtown, the beach renourishment project last year, and the resurfacing of State Road A1A, also just completed. 

Local officials had been a bit nervous about that FEMA money since the current president’s talk of abolishing the agency, executive orders realigning its purpose, and grant programs administered by FEMA getting shut down. Last week Flagler County Emergency Management Director Jonathan Lord cautioned county officials not to expect as much as they had from FEMA in the past. 

“I am thrilled that the FEMA pier funding came through as promised,” Flagler Beach Commissioner Scott Spradley, an attorney, said today. “Despite all of the government cuts by the new administration, I felt it would be highly unlikely that FEMA would be allowed to essentially breach its agreement concerning the Pier. With that said, I am thrilled that the matter is no longer in doubt.”

Spradley is also a photographer. He’s customarily taken a sunrise picture most mornings for the past many years somewhere on the city’s shoreline. He’s also taken some of the pier’s most iconic photographs, among them the picture of the sheared east end of the pier after Hurricane Ian in 2022, when over 100 feet of the pier collapsed, leaving it looking like a disheveled, gaping hulk:

Spradley is framing his shots for when the pier will be completed. 

“I feel two photos will be in order: One, with the golden Sunrise in the background and the new Pier in the foreground,” he said. “And the other, a drone image from over the end of the new Pier, with the beautiful developing downtown in the background.”