Pier 60 pavilion, thirty years on

If you have watched a sunset from Clearwater Beach, you have stood on Caladesi work. The Pier 60 project of 1995 and 1996 rebuilt the pier head and its pavilion for the City of Clearwater, and it has anchored the nightly sunset festival ever since.

The aerial photographs in our files show the job at two points: the pier stretched out into the Gulf in 1995 with the pavilion framing under way, and the finished structure a year later with the beach filling back in around it.

Building over water

Marine work asks different questions of a crew. Every delivery arrives on a schedule set by tides and weather, every fastener has to shrug off salt air for decades, and the public keeps using the beach around you the whole time. The pavilion was detailed for exactly that: open to the breeze, shaded through the afternoon, and simple to maintain.

Still standing

Three decades later the pavilion is still the backdrop for street performers, craft vendors, and the daily crowd that gathers to watch the sun go down. We are proud that it has aged the way we hoped it would.