Hot Dog Stand Put Ashore as Pier Is Dolled Up

A tiny hot dog stand, which for 30 years perched on the end of a pier at Dana Point, was moved to solid ground for the first time in its life Tuesday.

Amid the fluttering wings of scores of pigeons that have made the pier their home and under the watch of Paula Hops, who has operated the stand since 1981, workmen put the little building on dollies and rolled it off the pier and onto a concrete slab at the pier’s shore end.

“It should be reopened for business by this weekend,” said C.B. Shannep of Anchor Marine Co., which moved the stand as part of a $157,000 refurbishing of the 304-foot pier.

The pier was built in 1951 below the lofty bluffs at the west end of what is now Dana Point Harbor, and the hot dog stand was added in 1958.

For a dozen years, it was exposed to howling storms from the southeast before harbor breakwaters were completed in 1971. During that construction, 100 feet of the shore end of the original pier were buried in earth and rock to make a parking lot.

During all its years before and after the harbor was built, the pier has been a favorite spot for thousands of anglers, hikers and, more recently, students and employees from the nearby Orange County Marine Institute.

As a result, the deck planking was worn and patched, metal railings rusted and a landing ramp for small boats was unusable.

Restoration work, partly financed by a $66,950 grant from the state Wildlife Conservation Board, and the rest by the county Harbors, Beaches and Parks Department, is scheduled for completion in about three months and will include new decking, railings and lamps, replacement of the landing ramp and other improvements.

Paula Hops would say only that she was “happy” about the refurbishing and about the new and probably permanent location of her hot dog stand. And Shannep said he knew the work would temporarily disrupt the lives of the many pigeons who roost beneath the deck.