Pier to close 10 p.m. Wednesday through 6 a.m. Monday
By Sam Catanzaro
City officials are closing the Santa Monica Pier over the New Year’s holiday weekend.
On Wednesday, December 30 the City of Santa Monica announced that the Santa Monica Pier will temporarily close for the New Year’s holiday weekend. The closure will be effective at 10 p.m. on Wednesday, December 30 through 6 a.m. on Monday, January 4.
“In an effort to slow the rampant spread of COVID-19 throughout Los Angeles County, the Santa Monica Pier will temporarily close for the New Year’s holiday weekend,” said Constance Farrell, Public Information Officer for the City. “We are in the middle of the worst part of the public health crisis with hospitals stretched beyond their capacity as people continue to gather and infect friends and family.”
According to Farrell, the City’s Code Enforcement COVID-19 details will be active throughout the weekend to enforce unpermitted business operations, gatherings and face masks.
This is not the first time the City has closed the Pier throughout the pandemic. In March the Pier was closed for three months before reopening on June 24.
On Tuesday, the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health (Public Health) confirmed 227 new deaths and 12,979 new cases of COVID-19. According to Public Health, the high number of new deaths reflects a significant number of deaths from the backlog associated with the Spectrum outage and holiday reporting delays. Public Health again on Tuesday confirmed the highest number of hospitalizations reported in a day with 7,181 people with COVID-19 currently hospitalized. Of the 7,181 people with COVID-19 currently hospitalized, 20 percent of these patients are in the ICU.
Despite the Pier being closed, the “West Coast New Year’s Eve Countdown 2021 on The Pacific Wheel” will stream live on December 31, beginning at 11:30 p.m.. Using a variety of colors and patterns from its 174,000 LED lights, the Ferris wheel will present a numerical 60-second countdown, a “Happy New Year!” horizontal crawl, an oversized “2021,” and display “Happy New Year” in 16 different languages following the countdown including Spanish, Chinese, Hindi, German, French, and Japanese. Visit http://www.pacpark.com/countdown2021 for the live streaming New Year’s Eve presentation.
