Jennette’s Pier will be a family-oriented educational and recreational fishing pier.  It will feature a 1,000 foot long fishing pier, a 16,000 square foot pier house and public bath house.  The pier house will have a tackle shop, an educational classroom and large multi-purpose room on the second floor.  The upper floor will accommodate large meetings, school groups, conferences, dinners and receptions.

Three wind turbines located on the pier will help power the facility.  Solar panels, geothermal heating and cooling and gray water re-use plumbing systems are also among the sustainable green building components featured at the facility.

Jennette’s Pier will educate visitors about the oceans, and it will inspire appreciation and conservation of North Carolina’s aquatic environments.  The pier will also be a state of the art recreational fishing facility.

The Aquarium Division of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources will construct the pier with funds from existing non-General Fund receipts of up to $25 million.  The funding will come from admission receipts, private funds, and a storm water pilot project to clean up state-maintained ocean outfalls.

Construction of the pier will provide 555 on-site jobs and 1,250 off-site jobs and a benefit of more than $14 million to North Carolina’s economy.

The pier and pier house are designed to be LEED certified at the level of Gold.  The LEED certification process is a national ranking system developed by the U.S. Green Building Council for qualifying the level of sustainability and green building methods.

The project is expected to be completed i the Spring of 2011.

Construction updates for week #10 of 95 weeks.

Trestle construction continues with trestle #1 now over the water (yellow/orange crane).  Trestle #2 is crossing the beach (red crane).   Form work for the structural slab at the wastewater treatment plant building continues (west side of NC 12).  Test piles for the pier house will be delivered to the site, the week of July 13, 2009.  Installation of those piles will confirm all soil and loading conditions.  Meetings were held with design team and contractors to continue coordinating structure.  There are approximately 40 people presently working on the pier site.  All work is progressing on schedule.  Vibration monitoring continues to show that vibrations are significantly below levels that begin to cause damage.

The photos presented in this update represent construction that has taken place for the weeks of July 1-10.