ST. PETE BEACH, Fla. \u2014 St. Pete Beach residents believe it\u2019s taking the city too long to repair the Seventh Avenue Pass-a-Grille pier, which was damaged by Hurricane Helene in 2024.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe need to get this thing fixed,\u201d said resident Jeff Catanzarita. \u201cA lot of residents are concerned about it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Helene\u2019s storm surge buckled several planks on the pier, while others were completely popped off. Catanzarita said the damage looks like it happened yesterday, instead of in September 2024. Residents want to know what the city\u2019s plan is to fix it.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t know why it\u2019s taking too long,\u201d said Catanzarita. \u201cWe can\u2019t ever really get a solid answer like \u2018this is going to happen at such and such a day. You can count on that.\u2019 We don\u2019t get that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Commissioner Jon Maldonado said that part of the delay has been getting insurance money from FEMA. Maldonado said the city is currently waiting for Pinellas County to approve the permit.<\/p>\n
\u201cBecause we are relying on the county to issue us those permits, that has delayed us,\u201d he said. \u201cInsurance initially was slow, but we\u2019re caught up with the insurance now. So I feel that once that permit is issued, then we can move on to the actual refurbishment.\u201d<\/p>\n
Maldonado said the FEMA reimbursement is $96,000, which should cover all the repair costs. The pier is structurally sound and just needs some esthetic work done, according to Maldonado. He\u2019s hopeful the repairs will be completed in the next 6 months.<\/p>\n
\u201cOnce the city has removed all of the dangerous planks that have been busted up and things like that, it should go very quickly. So I\u2019m very hopeful that we\u2019ll get this done right around August, September time frame,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Catanzarita said he\u2019ll be happy once it re-opens.<\/p>\n
\u201cPass-a-Grille is a beautiful place. People come here from all over the state,\u201d he said. \u201cThey come down this bend here and they look at this eyesore and there\u2019s no reason for it.\u201d<\/p>\n
The city has engaged an engineering consultant to perform design and permitting, according to Public Services Director Camden Mills.<\/p>\n
\u201cHang in there with us. Don\u2019t give up,\u201d said Maldonado. \u201cWe\u2019re going to get this fixed and restored and even better than it was originally.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Maldonado said St. Pete Beach pioneers Mary Jane and John Ott originally built the dock, which later became a pier in the 1930s. Ott had an agreement to sell the dock to the city after he passed, which happened in 1960 for $4,000.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ST. PETE BEACH, Fla. \u2014 St. Pete Beach residents believe it\u2019s taking the city too long to repair…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":253339,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[274,3125,1802,2968,115,596,202,204,203,199,201,200,135,278,835],"class_list":["post-253338","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-st-petersburg","tag-app-top-stories","tag-hurricane-helene","tag-hurricane-milton","tag-josh-rojas","tag-news","tag-pinellas-county","tag-st-pete","tag-st-pete-headlines","tag-st-pete-news","tag-st-petersburg","tag-st-petersburg-headlines","tag-st-petersburg-news","tag-tampa","tag-top-stories","tag-vod"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/253338","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=253338"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/253338\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/253339"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=253338"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=253338"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=253338"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}