Navarre Beach Pier Walk On 3/26/10

LL Barlow, Frank Helton, Gary Wells, Gene Sullivan, and Calvin

Ms. Pat & Jim Mills

Gary & Frank

Mike Lovejoy, Dylan Manning, Gene, Frank, Gordon Goodin, Danny Smith, Junior Ratliff

Frank, Gene, and David Kimrey

Stoney

Frank

Gary & Bob Statton

Gordon & Gary

Gene, Dorothy Slye, Danny, Bob, Gary, Ms. Pat

Junior, LL, Danny, Gene

There he is boys!

Pelican

NavarreBeachToday.com took a couple of aerial shots from the Summerwinds condo of us on the pier today. You can see those pictures HERE.

Aerial slideshow (Photos by AeroPhoto.com)

Thanks to cheesegrits for his help with the photos!

3/23/10

3/22/10

Mobile Press-Register – Alabama, Florida compete to build Gulf of Mexico’s longest pier

http://blog.al.com/live/2010/03/alabama_florida_compete_to_bui.html

By Ryan Dezember
March 19, 2010, 9:30AM

Santa Rosa County is constructing a 1,545-foot fishing pier at Navarre Beach. The pier will soon become the Gulf of Mexico’s longest, surpassing the 1,540-foot pier opened in July at Gulf State Park.

Florida officials announced this week that they would add another 45 feet to the end of the Navarre Beach Fishing Pier, which is currently under construction, in a bid to bring back the title of the Gulf of Mexico’s longest pier.

When it opens in May, the Navarre Beach pier will reach 1,545 feet into the Gulf.

That will be about 5 feet longer than the $16.2 million pier the Alabama Department of Conservation and Natural Resources opened at Gulf State Park in July, where anglers can stand so far out into the open water that sailfish have been hoisted over the rails.

“It’s a friendly competition,” Conservation Department Commissioner Barnett Lawley said Thursday.

Lawley said he’s waiting to hear from department engineers to see if they can add a short extension to the Gulf Shores pier to reclaim the lead once Santa Rosa County, Fla., cuts the ribbon on its record-breaker.

Would the extension be a sprit, a sort of horizontal spire added simply for show? Or would it be in the mold of a bow pulpit, from which anglers could cast as they might from the nose of a fishing vessel?

“You’ve got to be able to fish from it,” Lawley laughed. “We’ve got to have rules.”

Like the Gulf State Park pier, Santa Rosa County’s is being built to replace one destroyed in storms.

Hurricane Ivan took out Gulf State Park’s 875-foot-long, circa-1968 pier in 2004. Santa Rosa County’s 1,450-foot-long pier had stood since 1974 until it was blasted by Ivan and the following summer’s Hurricane Dennis.

The original plans were to rebuild the Navarre pier to 1,500 feet. But in the fall the project’s builder, Ed Waters and Sons Contracting Co., e-mailed the county engineer with a pitch: If the county could come up with an extra $125,000 for materials and permits, the company would donate the labor to push the pier out 45 feet farther than planned. Then both could share the limelight of being associated with the Gulf of Mexico’s longest fishing pier.

The Pensacola Beach Gulf Pier still brags about being the Gulf’s longest on its Web site. But at 1,471 feet, it’s quickly falling from the pack. The Panama City Beach area boasts a pair of 1,500-foot piers, one that opened in the summer and one that’s under construction.

There’s a pair of “piers” made from the old approaches to the Sunshine Skyway Bridge across Tampa Bay that would be hard to beat if anyone counted them. One stretches more than a mile-and-a-half, the other 3,295 feet.

But they’re piers only in the sense that a tire is a swing seat. If it could still be a tire, it would. And if a freighter had not severed their connection in a 1980 crash, the piers would probably still be a bridge. Plus, they don’t jut into the Gulf.

And, like Lawley said, there has got to be rules.

http://blog.al.com/live/2010/03/alabama_florida_compete_to_bui.html

3/17/10

3/14/10

3/12/10

Pensacola News Journal – Navarre Pier approved to be longest on Gulf

http://bit.ly/aBpAM6

All hurdles have been cleared to allow the new Navarre Pier to be the longest on the Gulf of Mexico.

The state Department of Environmental Protection and the Federal Emergency Management Agency have signed off on allowing the pier to extend 1,545 feet into the Gulf, County Commission Chairman Gordon Goodin announced Thursday.

“It’s going to be a proud day when we can open up that pier and say it’s the longest pier in the Gulf of Mexico — not just the state of Florida,” Goodin said.

That day should come early this summer, according to county engineer Roger Blaylock.

“We’re projecting the pier should be complete sometime at or near the end of May,” Blaylock said. “We’re looking to put the pier in operation sometime in June.”

Originally, the pier was budgeted at $8.43 million. Because the old pier was damaged by hurricanes Ivan and Dennis, 90 percent of that is being covered by the Federal Emergency Management Agency; the state will pick up 7.5 percent; the county will cover 2.5 percent. That’s a local share of $210,626.

The extension would cost another $125,000 for permitting, design, materials and equipment.

http://bit.ly/aBpAM6

3/10/10