The City of Capitola sent notices to wharf restaurants up and down the California coast, gave them an extra month, and got one letter of interest back. Community and Economic Development Director Katie Herlihy told the City Council on September 10 that the one response came from a local restaurateur. She also said August is about the worst month to ask a wharf restaurant to put a bid together. A year earlier, a city survey on the wharf's future drew 1,067 responses.

That gap explains what the end of the wharf will look like for a while. The deck has been repaired since September 2024. The permanent restaurant is at least a year out, probably longer. Until then, the city is putting its interim plans on two things: a cheaper, temporary food concession and Capitola Boat & Bait, the business that never left and now works out of a cluster of sheds.

From 1,067 opinions to one letter

To see why the gap is so wide, look at what the city asked for. The Wharf House sat at the end of the pier for decades and served seafood, with entertainment and dancing through the summer. After the 2023 storms, the city demolished it and the Boat & Bait building in early 2024. Fuse Architecture drew up seven concepts. The cheapest was roughly $600,000 for restrooms only, and the most expensive was about $6.2 million for a restaurant, lifeguard station, stage and boat storage, according to Santa Cruz Local. In the survey, 42% of respondents favored permanent restaurant and fishing buildings, and 21% favored a fishing shop with flexible market space.

The council picked a hybrid of those two options in June 2025. The request for proposals the city released on May 7, 2026 turned that hybrid into a single marketplace building: a full-service restaurant of about 4,800 square feet and a fishing concession of about 1,200 square feet, plus public restrooms and a lifeguard and marine-rescue station. The catch was who would pay. The winning team would design, fully finance, build, operate and maintain the building under a long-term lease. It would also take on the development and permitting risk and pay the city both base and percentage rent.

The council tried to widen the field. At its April 23 review, it said the renderings were guidance and not a blueprint, and invited proposers to bring their own site plans. The city's own planning rules also set limits. Capitola's Coastal Land Use Plan Policy II-8 calls for the wharf to stay a free public fishing pier with "low intensity facilities," meaning food service, a fishing and boating shop, repair operations, water taxi service and restrooms. A private partner would be paying for a full restaurant build on a pier that the city's own plan keeps low-intensity.

Here is how the process played out:

The stopgap: smaller, cheaper, two to three years

The September 10 decision set the wharf's near-term path. The city's September newsletter summarized it this way. The council kept the marketplace RFP open for another year and told staff to start planning "a less expensive food and beverage concession on Capitola Wharf for the next 2 to 3 years." An RFP for that temporary concession is due back to the council in early 2027.

Herlihy's staff report gave the council four options. The meeting video shows the first was to keep the fishing concession with no food or drink at all. The second paired it with one or more small food and beverage concessions. The council chose to add food. Nothing about the size, look or operator of that concession has been decided, and the next public step is the early 2027 RFP.

So for at least the next couple of years, a full-service restaurant at the end of the wharf is a long-range goal, and the wharf in between is meant to be lighter and cheaper.

The tenant the city is negotiating with

That plan works because one business already operates out there. Capitola Boat & Bait has been in the same family since 1997, and siblings Tina Williams and David Morris have co-owned it since 2024. When the wharf reopened in September 2024, the city gave the shop a cluster of temporary sheds as its storefront, the Santa Cruz Sentinel reported in July. The city won't let them drill into the sheds, so they built freestanding pegboard walls for the rubber bait and fishing line. A fabric divider separates the sales floor from the boat-repair area.

Williams told the Sentinel that the city charges less for the sheds than for the old building. She also said that with the Wharf House closed, fewer people have a reason to spend time on the wharf.

The community has already weighed in once. In June, the council considered a leasing policy that would have opened existing city leases to competing bids. The Sentinel reported that 13 speakers opposed it, more than 40 letters supported Boat & Bait, and the council rejected the policy. Then the October 8 council agenda listed a closed-session real property negotiation for Capitola Wharf, 1400 Wharf Road. Interim City Manager Rudy Escalante was named as the city's negotiator, TDD, LLC dba Capitola Boat and Bait as the other party, and lease terms as the subject. No terms have been made public. Even so, the city is negotiating a lease with the business already out there while it plans the temporary food concession.

What the end of the wharf offers this fall

The restaurant site is empty, but the rest of the pier is new. The $8 million reconstruction, plus $425,000 raised by the community, paid for a wider deck, new railings and lighting, restrooms near the entrance, and ADA-compliant viewing stations, including one designed for people with color blindness.

• Getting on the water. Boat & Bait rents wooden skiffs, kayaks and paddleboards from the sheds, and sells bait and tackle. Check the shop's website for current fall hours before you go.
• Fishing from the rail. According to the Sentinel, customers have caught lingcod, rock cod, halibut, flounder and sea bass from the wharf or a rented boat. Giant sea bass and octopus have to go back in the water, but they can still get a page in Williams' catch photo book. A new fish-cleaning station sits on the deck.
• Evening walks. The new lighting runs the length of the wharf, which makes a walk after dinner in the Village an easy add-on.
• A park at the foot of Wharf Road. The city's new Park at Rispin Mansion is open, and a brick fundraiser is paying for engraved bricks on the upper terrace above the 1920s mansion.

The biggest food event on the wharf this year is a dinner in November. On Thursday, November 12, Outstanding in the Field brings back its long-table feast, hosted by the Monterey Bay Fisheries Trust, with Hans Haveman as host fisherman. Seats are $415, the guest chef is still to be announced, and founder Jim Denevan will run the kitchen, according to the event listing. The meal will feature Santa Cruz County farmers and Monterey Bay fishers, in collaboration with the Capitola Village and Wharf Business Improvement Area. The first one, in May 2025, sold out. Lookout Santa Cruz reported chefs Jessica Yarr, Nick Sherman and Kendra Baker cooking Miyagi oysters, beer-battered halibut and seafood bouillabaisse. November 12 is also the date of the next scheduled City Council meeting.

The Village calendar has two more events close to the wharf. The Capitola Village Halloween Parade lines up at 1:30 p.m. on Sunday, October 25, in Beach & Village Parking Lot 2. It steps off at 2 p.m. behind a fire engine and the Soquel High Senior Band, ends at Esplanade Park, and is followed by trick-or-treating at participating shops. On Saturday, November 14, the Sip & Stroll pairs about 30 Village shops with local wineries. A $50 ticket gets you a logo glass and 12 two-ounce pours.

Dates to watch

• November 12, 2026: Outstanding in the Field dinner on the wharf, and the next scheduled City Council meeting.
• Early 2027: The RFP for the temporary food and beverage concession returns to the council.
• Over the next year: The marketplace RFP stays open under its one-year extension, still looking for a private partner to build the permanent restaurant and fishing building.
• Any upcoming agenda: The Boat & Bait lease negotiation. Final decisions from closed session are reported in open session, according to the city's agenda.

City agendas are usually posted the Friday before each Thursday meeting on the city's meetings portal.

EF Homes is based in Capitola, and the wharf is part of our neighborhood too. We'll be watching for the temporary concession RFP when it comes back to the council in early 2027. If you'd like to talk about how changes on the wharf and in the Village fit into your own plans, Contact Us.