SWAMPSCOTT — Over the last 24 hours, contractors have been working to structurally support the Mission on the Bay restaurant after a portion of the seawall below the building collapsed Thursday afternoon.
Michael Whitehead, owner of the concrete-spraying company Xtreme Shotcrete, said the town called him Thursday afternoon and paid his company roughly $20,000 to spray concrete mix below the wall and install support beams.
Whitehead said that although the temporary support can keep the privately-owned portion of the wall standing for a few days, the collapsed section will have to be permanently repaired immediately to prevent a larger structural collapse.
“The rest of that wall is in peril — something is going to happen because I see the rock starting to bulge, which means there’s a hollowness behind a wall,” Whitehead said. “Anytime you have a bulge in a stone wall, that’s not good. That means your drainage has failed.”
Although the town covered the cost of temporary repairs, Marty Bloom, who owns the restaurant and the collapsed portion of seawall below it, will be responsible for paying for the permanent repair. Whitehead estimated that will cost anywhere from $300,000 to $800,000.
Department of Public Works Director Gino Cresta said the Town of Swampscott, which owns portions of the wall on both sides of the restaurant, funded the initial cost out of concern for the entire wall’s structural stability.
Town Administrator Sean Fitzgerald said although the collapsed portion of the wall is privately-owned, he’s been in touch with Bloom and called members of the state delegation to see if the Commonwealth could help fund Mission on the Bay’s repairs.
“At this point, it is not our intention to finance this. I have reached out to our legislative delegation to see what, if any, funding might be available. We certainly want to help,” Fitzgerald said.
Fitzgerald added that the town will work with structural engineers to determine whether the town-owned portion of the wall is structurally sound.
Swampscott purchased the neighboring Hawthorne by the Sea property in June and is currently planning potential uses for the lot. Fitzgerald said he does not believe Hawthorne’s wall is as eroded as Mission on the Bay’s, and that it likely will not pose much of a risk to future development.
“That wall [under Mission on the Bay] is reportedly over 100 years old and the wall system for the Hawthorne was reportedly updated in the 1960s,” Fitzgerald said. “It’s not collapsing, but we’re going to a structural engineer to take a look at it to ensure that we don’t have serious concerns about its integrity.”
Whitehead, on the other hand, said the fact that the central portion collapsed so suddenly is likely indicative of a larger structural threat to the entire wall. He added that before the collapse, he had suggested Bloom repair the wall, he added. Whitehead now recommends the property-owner hire engineering firm Simpson Gumpertz & Heger (SGH) to detect absences within the wall.
“The failure from the private owner’s property has affected the other walls. I would suggest SGH engineering come down. They have some type of a gap-detection device that they can put inside the crack and seek out and see if that thing has any kind of movement in it,” Whitehead said.
“It’s very minute movement. You can’t see it with the naked eye,” he added. “That’s why people were having dinner one minute and then the wall fell the next.”
Fitzgerald said that while there is a lot of work ahead, he is glad nobody inside the restaurant or on the beach was injured.
“I think we’re fortunate that nobody got hurt,” Fitzgerald said. “It’s my hope that they’ll work at a deliberate speed to advance the repair and replacement of that section of the wall that will last for the next 100 years.”
