Legally, Newport News was not allowed to use eminent domain to get land needed to rebuild the watermen’s pier.
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By Sabine Hirschauer
October 29, 2008
Newport News
The city will not rebuild Deep Creek pier, said City Council members during a work session Tuesday.
“We are in a situation where we are very limited to what City Council can do,” said Mayor Joe S. Frank. Newport News began to dismantle the aging pier at the end of Deep Creek Road last year because of safety and liability concerns. But since the city demolished the pier, a firestorm has ignited over whether to rebuild the more than six-decade-old local landmark.
To build a full-fledged mooring pier for the local watermen would have required the city to purchase land for parking and restrooms. But the adjacent property owners of the former pier were not willing to sell or lease land, said City Attorney Stuart Katz.
For the city to take land via eminent domain would be illegal because by law such a step needs to benefit the public, and commercial watermen are private businesses.
“We really have no way to rebuild a pier for the watermen,” Frank said.
The option of building a recreational pedestrian pier instead also proved problematic because it still required the city to buy land for restrooms and parking. It would also be costly — between $115,000 and $314,000 — and people actually did not want just a pedestrian pier, said Michael Poplawski, director of the city’s Department of Parks, Recreation and Tourism.
“There is very little interest in establishing a pedestrian pier,” Poplawski said. “They don’t want it to be a pedestrian pier. They want it to be a mooring pier.”
The stumbling blocks to rebuild Deep Creek pier included not only the lack of land for parking, trash cans and restrooms, but some watermen also had abused the slips at the pier in the past as a graveyard for abandoned boats. Also, over the years fewer and fewer commercial fishermen used the pier.
With the pier gone now, watermen dock their boats at the Menchville Marina, which sits opposite the former Deep Creek pier. On average, about 60 boats tie up at the marina annually, but about 75 percent of them are not from Newport News, city officials said.
After delving into extensive legal research for months, Katz said Tuesday the city had no legal obligation to rebuild the pier. Earlier some residents alleged the pier was given to Warwick County in 1933 and then to the city with the stipulation to maintain it. The city was also not required by federal law to do so, Katz said.
The city is currently rebuilding the 735 feet of deteriorating bulkhead at Menchville Marina, which is land the city leases to a private owner. Additional work at the marina includes regrading the low area along the parking lot next to the bulkhead, which often floods.
“I am very disappointed,” Councilwoman Madeline McMillan, who earlier in the discussion proposed to waive or discount the mooring fee at the marina for commercial fishermen from Newport News.
“We do a lot of things for a lot of people. I understand our financial situation, but I am very disappointed that it had to come to this.”
Deep Creek Pier 