Waveland Lighthouse Project

The city of Waveland is decked out with lights this holiday season, but a popular stretch of beach nestled close to the downtown business district, will soon be aglow – a beacon of light year round.
News 25’s Toni Miles shares this update on the Waveland lighthouse project

Sunrays showered down over Garfield Ladner Memorial Pier Tuesday afternoon, but in just a few weeks, a $1.9 million dollar project will light up the sky in Waveland.
Waveland Mayor Mike Smith says, “The lighthouse is something we added just as a feature to draw people to Waveland. It’s not meant to navigate any boats into any harbor we don’t have. We can change it. It’s LED. We can change it for Christmas or other events like that right now.”
Offering a panoramic view, the Waveland lighthouse will set the stage for city events, weddings and other functions once complete.
Smith says, “I’ve been telling people it would be done by fall. I wasn’t that far off. It is like I said, it’s about 95 percent complete and we’re very excited to be able to cut the ribbon at the first of next year.”
Although the facility is open to the public for use, the project is being paid for with tidelands funds and revenues from the seawall tax and go mesa funds – money paid by oil rigs … With a huge chunk of this money sunk into the required groundwork.
“The foundation is major. The piling underneath the slab, the actual foundation slab, is about 85 to 90 feet deep in the ground. The foundation alone is where a lot of the money comes in,” says Smith.
A project likely to bring relief for visitors and locals alike
” Waveland was the only coastal city that didn’t have a beachfront bathroom, which limited a lot of events on the beach, like the volleyball nets that we have,” says Smith. “There would have been tournaments if there had been bathrooms. Portalet is not a bathroom, really, so this is going to allow us to have those type of events down here.”
In Waveland, Toni Miles, News 25.