Money raised at Glory Days
On May 14th, Glory Days Beachside Grill held a memorial Celebration of Life for Seal Beach’s “John and Eddie.” The turnout was enormous. The stories shared about these two were enlightening. Many of John’s fraternal brothers and teaching colleagues attended.
Glory Days and Inflight surfboards sold T-shirts in John and Eddie’s memory. These T-shirts sales raised hundreds of dollars for Seal Beach Animal Care Clinic. John and Eddie both touched many lives and we are all better for it.
Nancy Brown
Seal Beach
No structure for Pier
The Pier without the building on the end looks fantastic! Why build a new structure? Leave it alone! Possibly benches and tables? Telescopes?
Ken Kropf
Seal Beach
Will something be done about Pier?
This morning my wife texted me to tell me the structure at the end of the Seal Beach Pier was on fire. I went to the KTLA website and watched the fire departments of Long Beach and Orange County put the fire out. It was sickening to watch. I also listened to the commentary from the pilot discussing what he was observing. He made what I thought was a quite humorous comment. He said, “Maybe this will finally make Seal Beach do something about this pier.” Good luck on that one! He obviously does not know much about our “do nothing” city government.
It has been seven months since I wrote to the council and the editor of the Sun. At that time the building at the end of the pier had been abandoned for over two years. There was no response from any of the City Council members to my letter, and nothing was done with the pier. Now it is over three years since the building was abandoned. Occasionally, maybe once every three or four months there is a short discussion about something the council might do. But nothing has ever been done.And now? The structural damage to the pier is probably much worse than it was after the 2014 hurricane. The reporters said the Long Beach fire boats were primarily trying to save the pier. We can only hope they were successful. Perhaps this fire is “fortuitous.” Maybe there is fire insurance to cover the removal of the destroyed building and damage to the pier. However, many (most) fire insurance policies specifically exclude abandoned or empty buildings because they are very often damaged by fire. Hopefully the City’s risk manager considered that when obtaining insurance. Whatever ends up happening we now know it will be more expensive to do anything with the pier.
So what will happen now? I will tell you what will happen—nothing. Nothing, that is, unless the City is ordered to tear down the burnt up structure by some other government agency. (We can only hope.)
But what we can be assured of is that now the entire Pier will probably be off limits to all of Seal Beach’s citizens for months—if not years. And we can be assured that there will be more discussion and “decisions” by our City Council—which will result in nothing being done.
James R. Wakefield
Seal Beach
