Endangered Sea Isle City condos get new bulkhead
SEA ISLE CITY – A shiny black steel bulkhead now wraps around a three-unit bayfront condominium at 8209 Sounds Ave., blocking the property from the fast-moving currents that created a disaster in January.
Nine months ago, a private bulkhead near the 82nd Street property failed, ripping away the protection and causing the wrap-around balconies there to tumble into the Intracoastal Waterway near Townsends Inlet.
The small condominium association that oversees the building hired the Castle Group marine construction company, which finished constructing the bulkhead last month, company President Bill Castle said.
Work included driving the heavy steel sheets as deep as 40 feet into the channel bottom and using fill material and stone around the homes.
The building itself is still damaged and unoccupied.
The property owners, who live in Pennsylvania and New Jersey, could not be reached Friday.
The bulkhead failure nine months ago created major problems for properties in the area.
Without a barrier to protect the condominium and its land from the currents, the passing water would have eaten away more of the bayfront property, said Janet Castle, also a company president.
“It was definitely in danger of collapsing even more,” she said.
The marine construction company recently finished about three months of work, using divers to help install the bulkhead, company officials said.
Because of the tight quarters around the bayfront homes and property in the area and the size of the equipment involved, the company needed a barge to ship in the 60-foot-long steel sheets that comprise the bulkhead.
On Jan. 12, parts of the decks on the condominium collapsed into the water after the bulkhead failed the day before.
The encroaching water threatened to undermine the supports of the $2.5 million waterfront condominium.
The collapse let pieces of decks and floating docks to drift down the bay and to the ocean.
All the units are second homes and were unoccupied at the time of the accident.
