Venice Beach Got Its Sand Back This Summer. The South Jetty Is Still Waiting.

"We're here now, nearing the end. Everything's coming together really nice." That's how Steven Berens, the City of Venice's stormwater engineering manager, described the beach renourishment project in late August, and if you've walked Venice Beach lately you've probably noticed what he means. The sand is back. In some stretches it's back by a lot.

What most people walking that new sand don't realize is that the beach and the rock jetty at Humphris Park are two completely different repair jobs, running on two completely different clocks, and one of them is nowhere close to finished.

The Sand Came Back One Segment at a Time

The $27.5 million project, managed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and built by contractor Weeks Marine, covered 3.2 miles of shoreline from south of the Venice Inlet down to south of the fishing pier, working through the stretch in seven numbered segments. Segments 1 through 4, covering the area that includes Gulf Manor and the main Venice Beach access, wrapped up by July 22. Segment 5, near Golden Beach, finished by August 7. Segment 6 was done by August 12, and crews moved into Segment 7, the final stretch near Brohard Beach and the pier, finishing it by mid-August. On August 17, FOX 13 reported that dredge and fill work along the full 3.2 miles was complete, with nearly 600,000 cubic yards of new sand placed and the shoreline widened by 50 to 100 feet depending on location.

Here's the part worth sitting with: the last time this stretch was renourished, back in 2015, crews placed roughly 791,000 cubic yards of sand. This year's project got the beach to a similar 50 to 100 foot gain in width using nearly 600,000 cubic yards, noticeably less material. City officials haven't said publicly whether that's because this stretch had less ground to make up after 2024's storms or because dredging and placement has simply gotten more efficient over the past decade. Either way, if you're used to measuring the beach by how far you have to walk to get your feet wet, expect that distance to be longer than it's been in years, especially near Golden Beach and Gulf Manor, which got their sand first and have had the most time to settle.

Why Brohard Paw Park Was the Last Piece to Settle

If you take your dog to the beach section at Brohard Paw Park, you already know this project didn't wrap up cleanly everywhere at once. As of late August, that access point remained closed while crews finished placing rock and burying piping in the area, even though sand placement for the broader project had already concluded. It's a small detail, but it matters if your routine includes that particular stretch of sand: the fact that the dredging is done doesn't mean every access point reopened on the same day. Demobilization, rock removal, and the work to extend piped stormwater outfalls were still ongoing even after the headline "beach renourishment complete" news broke.

If you haven't been down to Brohard recently, it's worth checking current signage before you go, particularly if the dog beach is part of your regular walk.

The Nesting Season Nobody Planned Around

One reason this project felt slower and messier than past cycles is that it ran straight through sea turtle nesting season, which stretches from May 1 through October 31 on this coast. Federal funding constraints forced the Corps to build during the window officials would have preferred to avoid. Mote Marine Laboratory ended up relocating more than 500 turtle nests out of the construction path, a number that Berens said "greatly exceeded" what Mote had anticipated going in. That's not a footnote. It's a big part of why the segment-by-segment timeline kept shifting through July and August, and why crews were still working active zones later into the summer than the original May start date suggested.

Sharky's on the Pier owner Justin Pachota put the whole summer in perspective simply: "This isn't the first time we've gone through it." His read was that the crews moved fast and the beach is already back to what regulars expect, with the work now shifting toward wrapping up and moving equipment out.

A Different Clock at the South Jetty

Here's the mechanism that generic beach updates tend to skip past. The sand project and the jetty are not the same repair, they're not funded the same way, and they're not on the same schedule, even though they sit on the same short run of shoreline.

The beach renourishment falls under a long-standing 50-year cost-sharing agreement between the City of Venice and the Army Corps, with renourishment scheduled on a roughly ten-year cycle regardless of what else is happening on the coast. That cycle was already on the calendar when Hurricanes Helene and Milton tore up the shoreline in 2024, and the damage from those storms is why the federal government ended up covering the entire $27.5 million cost through emergency disaster funding this time instead of the usual state and local cost-share split.

The South Jetty walkway at Humphris Park is a separate structure entirely, and it has been closed since those same 2024 hurricanes. Unlike the beach, it has no scheduled maintenance cycle and no dedicated funding stream. The parking lot reopened back in January 2025, but the walkway out to the rocks has stayed fenced off since, with no firm reopening date. The Corps is expected to release a maintenance report on the jetty in November 2026, detailing projected repair costs and a possible construction timeline, and comprehensive reconstruction isn't expected to start before 2027 at the earliest.

Some residents asked the obvious question this summer: why fix the beach before fixing the jetty people actually walk out on for sunset views? The city's answer, in short, is that the beach work was locked into a decades-old federal agreement with its own funding already secured, while the jetty repair is still waiting on a separate pot of money that Congress hasn't appropriated yet. The jetty isn't even off to the side of this story. It literally marks the northern boundary of the same stretch of sand that just got renourished, which makes it a strange place for two totally different timelines to meet.

What Changes for Your Next Trip to the Beach

A few practical notes if you're heading down to Venice Island this month:

1. Expect wider beach almost everywhere between the inlet and the pier, most noticeably at Golden Beach and Gulf Manor, which finished first and have had the longest to settle.
2. Check current signage at Brohard Paw Park before bringing your dog, since that access point was among the last to fully reopen.
3. Don't expect the South Jetty walkway to reopen soon. That repair is tied to a separate federal report due in November, not to anything happening on the beach itself.
4. The fishing pier itself is a different story altogether. It fully reopened back in September 2025 after its own hurricane repair, so if you're headed out to fish or watch the sunset from the pier deck, that part of the routine hasn't changed.
5. If you notice equipment still parked near the pier or rock work continuing into September, that's demobilization and outfall extension work, not a sign the sand project stalled.

For a broader look at how the island's beaches, restaurants, and walkable stretches fit into daily life here, our earlier piece on life on Venice Island is worth a read alongside this one.

The beach came back this summer largely on schedule, if a little later in the season than anyone would have chosen. The jetty is a longer wait, and the honest answer right now is that nobody, including the Army Corps, can tell you exactly when that walk to the rocks reopens. Watch for that November report if it's the piece of the shoreline you miss most.

If you're a longtime Venice Island resident who's watched the coastline change shape more than once, or you're weighing what a shift like this means for a property near the water, Kelly Pankiw knows this stretch of coast block by block. Let's Connect.