Mispec Beach a miss for most of the summer as city repairs damage

Mispec beach will be open to the public by early September after repair work starts next month by the City of Saint John.

The city will be putting in a new staircase and the gabions — structural mesh keeping the rocks together — will be fixed.

"The storm surges that did the damage this time around were not as severe ... and new gabions were put in, so the work held up," said Marc Doucet, the operations manager for the city parks and recreation department.

The stairs will be built on a different piling system, which should produce a better result from the old concrete design.

"It's more of a tube-type system, so the sand can float up and down ... and they are more flexible. So, we are hoping to get more longevity out of those stairs," Doucet said.

The park was closed to the public in May.

Higher-than-normal tides and a storm surge in early April effectively destroyed a sea wall built just three years earlier, ripping open wire-mesh cages and washing away the rock inside.

A wood staircase was left dangling and a ramp walkway disappeared.

"We knew the prudent thing to do was to close the park until it's safe," Doucet said.

"Unfortunately with the timing of the storm and the time it took us to get engineering plans and the correct course of action, it basically lost us a summer session at Mispec."