A “monumental accomplishment” has been reached in the process of repairing a set of beach access stairs at Whale View Point, with a start date finally in sight.
After years of planning, work on the staircase is slated to begin Oct. 14 and is expected to continue through Wednesday, Oct. 28. Work hours will be 7 a.m. and 3 p.m. During construction, visitors and surfers can access the beach from the stairs near the Surf Shack across from 333 Coast Blvd.
The plan is to repair, clean and make the stairs “like new” by installing precast concrete pavers on them. The stairs, in the 400 block of Coast Boulevard, have were described as “really crumbled, rough and eroded” by project volunteer and former La Jolla Parks & Beaches president Bob Evans.
The beach stairs at Whale View Point in La Jolla are slated for repair. (Ashley Mackin-Solomon)
Construction of the original stairway was funded by La Jolla philanthropist Ellen Browning Scripps in the 1920s, but Evans opined that “I don’t think there has been any maintenance or repair in the last 100 years.”
To protect the stairs but make them safer and more comfortable to use, sand would be cleared from the stairway and slurry would be applied to smooth the surface. The precast pavers will be made offsite and and then adhered to the existing steps.
Landscape architect Jim Neri previously said pavers and bonding material were “selected carefully and through several iterations with the city of San Diego.” They are intended to look similar to what is already there without matching it exactly.
He added that the material “has a lot of strength” to withstand the marine environment.
Refreshing the beach access stairs at La Jolla’s Whale View Point has been talked about for roughly two years.
The stairs are included in the La Jolla Park Coastal Historic District, which also encompasses places such as La Jolla Cove, the Children’s Pool, the Casa de Mañana retirement community and the Red Roost and Red Rest cottages. The area, based on an 1887 map of what was called La Jolla Park, includes eight acres of coastal parkland roughly between Torrey Pines Road and Coast Walk in the north and nearly the end of Coast Boulevard in the south.
The district was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in spring 2024. At a celebration ceremony in November that year, volunteers said they were raising funds to repair the stairs. With funding secured, the project was handed over to the La Jolla Coastal Conservancy — which aims to provide a mechanism for private entities to conduct repairs on city land by using a right-of-entry permit rather than starting from scratch for each project — for execution.
“This collaboration among the city of San Diego, the Museum of History and Culture La Jolla landmark steering committee, La Jolla Parks & Beaches, and La Jolla Coastal Conservancy brings together historic preservation, community fundraising, and project coordination to implement and restore an important coastal access point,” LJCC wrote in a statement.
La Jolla Parks & Beaches trustees praised these developments at the group’s Oct. 5 meeting.
“We’re grateful to finally see the light at the end of the tunnel, to get these stairs repaired,” LJP&B member Seonaid McArthur said at the meeting. “And we’re grateful that the Coastal Conservancy exists to try and facilitate and speed up the repair of these stairs.”
Fellow LJP&B member Melinda Merryweather added, “For those of you who don’t know, this is a monumental accomplishment. We’ve talked about it coming up on two years now, and to get all the permissions, the right contractor and the money, it was quite an accomplishment.”
In other Coastal Conservancy news:
South Casa Stairs: Working in concert with the city, LJCC is also developing a repair project for a set of beach access stairs at South Casa Beach near the Children’s Pool lifeguard tower.
The base of the beach access stairs at South Casa near the Children’s Pool lifeguard tower was damaged by storms in early 2024, and the stairway was chained off by the city.
LJCC chair Brenda Fake shared at the LJP&B meeting that the has a city-approved design, but organizers still need to clear the “big hurdle” of obtaining funding. The LJCC will be responsible for all the costs and engineering design, as well as construction contracting and permit applications. The city will offer “procedural support” in getting the project through development and implementation, she said. The city also will help in preparation of permit materials, facilitate department reviews and oversee construction inspections.
As of now, the project is unfunded. Fake said that one anonymous donor pledged to pay up to $100,000 and that LJCC is actively seeking grant funding to bring everything together. An exact cost estimate is unknown, although Fake says they have “an estimate of $5 million based on other people’s projects.”
The beach access stairway at La Jolla’s South Casa Beach has been closed since early 2024. (Ashley Mackin-Solomon)
A successful fundraiser: The LJCC celebrated a year of work and raised funds for future projects at an invite-only “Cocktails at the Cove” event on Oct. 1.
Fake said the event — which included food, drinks, entertainment and a silent auction — brought in roughly $70,000 to fund a variety of projects.
Some of the largest donations came from proceeds from the BirdStock music festival, which offered $20,000 to help fund a project to paint the exterior of a belvedere (also known as a gazebo) along La Jolla’s coastline and the painting of the Whale View Point surf shack’s exterior. The Kiwanis Club of La Jolla also offered $8,000 to close the gap for the restoration of an aging white wooden fence that runs along the coast from Goldfish Point to La Jolla Cove.
Further donations can be collected through lajollacoastalconservancy.org.
— La Jolla Light editor Ashley Mackin-Solomon contributed to this report.