The Cape Hatteras Fishing Pier in Frisco, known to most as just the Frisco Pier, has been a southern Hatteras Island landmark for 50 years.
It?s been beloved by locals and visitors, anglers and sightseers.
In recent years, it?s been badly battered by hurricanes and northeasters and only part of it is still standing. It has not been open to the public in about five years.
The owners and park officials have been working for those years to reach a solution to the now unsightly landmark that has become a public safety hazard.
This week the National Park Service announced the final ?hurrah? for the pier.
The concessions contract with the owners has run out and the Park Service has purchased the property. Park officials intend the remove what?s left of the pier and the pier house and to replace it with a public beach access.
The Park Service says it expects to announce a timeline for the removal in a couple months.
That?s not what the owners intended or wanted, they say.
?I think it?s a raw deal for Hatteras Island,? said Tod Gaskill, who owns the pier with his wife, Angie. ?It?s a landmark for the island, and I thought it should stay there.?
Gaskill said he has done all he could to get the Park Service to help rehabilitate the pier or to get the community interested in forming a non-profit to take it over.
Nothing worked, he said, and, although he said he?s not ?mad at anyone,? he certainly thinks he?s been mistreated by the seashore officials.
?The Park Service has been playing me hard for eight years,? Gaskill said in an interview earlier this month.
In the end, he adds, ?They shoved me in a corner and said sell or we?ll see you in litigation?They were going to take it from me anyway.?
Last month, the Gaskills reached an agreement with the National Park Service to sell their interests in the pier, the pier house, the parking lot, and the Cape Hatteras Pier Drive, the road from Highway 12 to the parking lot.
The Park Service has asked for a Freedom of Information Act request before it releases details of the sale.
However, Gaskill said he was paid $160,000, which he said is up from the $59,000 he was offered last year.
Tod Gaskill was born on Hatteras Island about the time the pier was built and was raised here.
He says he?s not a fisherman and has never fished off the pier, but he recognized its importance as a cultural landmark, tourist attraction, and economic boon.
In 2003, after the pier was damaged by Hurricane Isabel, Gaskill bought it to try to save it.
?It was not to line my pockets,? Gaskill says. ?I knew the pier was not a money-making operation.?
He says he spent $400,000 to buy the pier and repair it. ?Not a soul put anything in it but me.?
?I never saw one dime out of the pier,? he added.
But the old wooden pier just kept getting battered by storms and parts of it fell into the ocean.
Gaskill said he approached the Park Service for help in finding the money to rehabilitate the structure.
At first, he says, the Park Service was encouraging.
?They told me, ?We want the pier?We know it?s important to the island and its people.??
However, nothing worked out, in large part because the pier was a privately owned business, not eligible for some grants and public monies, according to park officials.
Gaskill says he looked for help from the county and the business community.
?The public needed to get behind it,? he said, ?but they never did.?
He says he offered to relinquish his ownership to anyone who was willing to get the pier back up and running.
However, nothing worked out, and eventually his concession contract ran out. Since only pieces of the pier were still standing, he couldn?t reopen it.
?At one point,? he says, ?three million could have built a nice pier there.?
Darrell Echols, deputy superintendent of the seashore, said the Park Service did all it could to try to help find financing and keep the pier in place.
It just didn?t work out.
?It?s just a sad thing that people never really did rally around it,? Gaskill says.
