Winnetka hopes to restore Tower Road pier by end of year

An estimated commitment of up to seven figures could partially bring back public access to one of Lake Michigan’s local features by the end of 2026.

Winnetka trustees during their March 19 session dove deep into discussions related to the near- and long-term future of the pier at Tower Road Beach.

And after more than an hour of presentations and commentary, trustees backed a recommendation from village staff to move forward with a plan to restore “pedestrian public access and reduced parking to the extent possible by the end of this calendar year.”

As previously reported by The Record, Winnetka officials announced in February that the pier would close indefinitely due to safety concerns. As part of that decision, officials also committed to quickly reviewing ways to potentially reopen the structure.

The Village closed the pier on Jan. 27 after safety concerns were discovered during a “structural analysis” of the pier by consultant Baird & Associates, a firm the Village commissioned in October of 2025 to conduct the evaluation of the structure.

Village officials told The Record in February that the pier was “unsound due to erosion beneath the pier and damage to the pier’s (retaining wall).”

Representatives from Baird presented the findings of their analysis during the March 19 meeting, saying that although the pier is still functioning for the purposes of steam-generation needs at the electric plant, it is in its current state “unfit for parking vehicles or access by pedestrians.”

“At its core, it’s that the pier is very old,” Rodey Batiza, of Baird, said of the firm’s root cause assessment of the pier. “It’s exceeded its service life. Most marine structures of this type are designed for a 50-year service life on the long end. Many are designed for less than that.”

What’s next

Based on the feedback from Baird, village staff hoped to gain policy direction from the Village Council on the immediate future of the pier so it could move forward with the next phase of improvements in this fiscal year.

Nick Narhi, the village’s director of water and electric, presented a pair of options for near-term action.

The first, as outlined by Narhi, would be to complete a second, more comprehensive structural engineering inspection of the pier. Doing so, he said, would all but ensure the pier remained fully closed throughout 2026 and likely much of 2027.

That option, although more complete than Barid’s review, would essentially be a “second opinion” and would likely cost up to $250,000, Narhi said.

The second option would direct staff to proceed with pursuing a reconfigured footprint on the table land, which could lead to designing a means that brings back public parking and possibly pedestrian access before the end of 2026.

The Village Council showed clear support for the latter, with several trustees expressing a hope to try and recapture, at least partially, the public access that was previously available.

Under this recommendation, village staff would first prepare a bid for what a future parking lot or public access at the site would look like and then begin to develop drawings and a contract. Staff would also select a contractor to conduct the work.

A key benefit of this option, Narhi said, is that all the work would be completed on the table land and would not require any interaction with regulatory agencies that oversee permitting in Lake Michigan.

Per Narhi, further inspections and engineering analysis would still be required and, under this plan, the very end of the pier would still need to be restricted

Based on suggestions from Baird, this option could cost the village anywhere between $500,000 to $1 million. That estimate is well above the $300,000 the village had earmarked in its fiscal year 2026 budget for work on the pier.

Narhi said village staff in the coming weeks can begin to flesh out conceptual ideas and put together further details on what the coming inspections of the pier will look like. The village will likely need at least one month for the request-for-proposal process to play out before returning to the council with a contract for its consideration.

Village Manager Kristin Kazenas confirmed discussions will return to the council, saying “there would be additional steps to get confidence of what the plan could safely be.”

‘Restoring beach continuity’

Although the council has the workings for a short-term plan, the long-range future of the pier was also a brief topic of conversation at the meeting.

And while discussions on this weren’t as detailed as the immediate future, the council showed some favor to a recommendation to demolish the pier and reimagine it after steam generation ends in 2035.

“By considering demolition of the structures, there’s an opportunity to restore beach continuity after nearly 100 years,” Narhi said.

Waiting until 2035 to move forward with a potential pier revamp would give the village time to engage the community, develop a master plan, and permit and budget for the improvements , Narhi told the council.

“This would also be an opportunity to collaborate with the park district in the future on what the vision for the lakefront could be in this location,” he added.

According to a village memo from Narhi and statements made during the March 19 meeting, Winnetka’s construction into Lake Michigan started in 1893 as a means to feed and protect the water treatment plan.

Multiple shoreline protection measures and additions took place in the years that followed, which ultimately led to the pier and cooling ponds taking shape around 1950 in a similar build-out as exists today, he said.

The cooling ponds and pier, per Narhi, support steam power generation for the village. That power generation has offered Winnetka nearly $50 million in cost savings from the Illinois Municipal Electric Agency since 1991.

Winnetka will retire steam generation after 2035, making the cooling ponds and pier unnecessary.

The pier, which is connected to Tower Road Beach and features several parking spots and an overlook, took significant damage in 2020 due to near record-high high lake levels. The pier end, per the village, was closed that same year due to partial collapse of asphalt decking, which Narhi says in his memo was “likely from erosion due to wave action.”

The village previously told The Record that the pier last underwent structural repairs in 2022, while surface repairs were made in 2023.

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