Three years after Hurricane Sally wiped out a 200-foot section of the Gulf State Park Fishing Pier on the Alabama coast, the pier has closed for construction to repair hurricane damage and should reopen by the end of next summer, according to the Alabama Department of Conservation and Natural Resources.

Gulf State Park Pier was damaged by Hurricane Sally in September of 2020 just as it was about to reopen after a $2.4 million rebuild due to a hit from an earlier storm.

The 1,540-foot long pier had been the second longest on the Gulf of Mexico (the Navarre Beach pier is 1,545 feet), but Hurricane Sally collapsed a 200-foot section near the octagonal fishing area at the south end.

After a lengthy bid process to get Federal Emergency Management Agency funds, the $13.6 million job was awarded to MD Thomas Construction, which did the previous renovation.

The pier closed to the public on Nov. 12 and will remain closed throughout the construction, which should be completed in 2024. It’s expected to take about eight months, with a target date of August for reopening.

Until then, the parking lot and the public restrooms will be closed. The pier area will not be available for beach access while it’s a construction zone.

The repair process may have taken longer than fishermen and tourists would have liked, said Lamar Pendergrass, operations supervisor for the South Region of the State Parks Division of the Department of Conservation and Natural Resources.

“When you’re dealing with a government bureaucracy, things don’t move as well as we would like,” Pendergrass told Outdoor Alabama, the department’s official publication. “We’re just proud to get this project started.”

The construction company will use a barge in the pier area to facilitate construction.

While the pier is closed, park visitors can still get to the beach at Cotton Bayou, Alabama Point, Shell Beach and the Beach Pavilion, and Romar Beach access will open soon with improvements.

Rebuilding the pier will require removing the concrete pilings that collapsed and are underwater. The removal of debris is expected to take a couple of months, depending on the weather.

Some of the standing pilings will have to be repaired by divers.

Lighting equipment for the entire pier will have to be replaced.

Even though the pier was only open as a short section since Hurricane Sally, business was brisk.

Pendergrass said 34,100 fishing passes and 82,000 sightseeing passes were sold in 2023, even though the publicly open part of the pier was shorter than it had been.

Even with a shorter pier, the fishing was good, if different.

“The anglers weren’t able to target some of the usual species,” Pendergrass said. “This season, I know that sheepshead was one of the primary fish we saw being caught out there.”

Redfish, flounder and even some red snapper have been caught off the short pier, he said.

When the work is complete, the pier should be better than ever, said Chris Blankenship, commissioner of the Alabama Department of Conservation and Natural Resources.

“A trip to the Gulf is not complete without experiencing the sights from the pier,” he said. “When the work is completed, anglers and other park visitors will have full access to one of the premier fishing and sightseeing destinations on the Gulf Coast.”

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