City of Coos Bay release – The former Central Dock property was once a bustling export facility on Coos Bay’s waterfront. The export facility was developed in the late 1940s and operated until the early 1990s. Much of the former Central Dock property sat idle for decades. The City acquired the southern portion of the property in 2004 with the intent to undertake the necessary work to clean up the former industrial site and prepare the property to become what it is now, the home of the Coos History Museum. The remainder of the former Central Dock property was purchased by a private developer in 2017 and the planning began to develop Coos Bay Village. The once extensive and decades old Central Dock wooden wharf was deteriorating and had become dangerous. The wharf itself was considered an orphan structure as it was built over property under the ownership of the state. The developers of Coos Bay Village secured the approval from state and federal agencies to remove the deteriorated wharf decking back in 2021. Not only did they remove the decking from the old wharf section in front of Coos Bay Village, they also removed the decking from the section of wharf which sat near the Coos History Museum. While all the wooden planks of the former wharf were removed, a ragged cluster of rotting pilings in the water were left. The developers of Coos Bay Village applied for and received permission to pull up the weathered creosote covered pilings out of the bay. The work began several weeks ago and now all the wharf related pilings have been removed. I wanted to take this opportunity to thank the developers of Coos Bay Village, Greg Drobot, and Daniel Graham, for stepping up and removing the dangerous wharf and the legacy pilings from the bay.
