ORANGE BEACH — City officials are moving aggressively to make the seawall on the west side of Perdido Pass usable again.

The once-popular fishing and sightseeing point under the pass bridge has been closed since early 2012 because the structure is crumbling and unsafe.

“As I understand it when the divers went down you could literally put your hands through the seawall, even above the water line,” Scott Hardy of Burk-Kleinpeter told the Orange Beach City Council.

It has been blocked off from the public by a temporary chain link fence.

State officials — the area is currently under the jurisdiction of the Alabama Department of Transportation — have consistently said money is not available to rebuild the wall, estimated to be about a $10 million project.

“I met with the governor on (Jan. 15) for an hour and that was one of the discussions,” Mayor Tony Kennon said. “We have a fix for it ourselves and hopefully we’ve convinced him to let us do it ourselves. I think they are going to.

“We had a great meeting.”

According to Orange Beach Director of Coastal Resources Phillip West, the preliminary plan calls for making the area behind the current railing like a beach. He said the project could range from $300,000 on up to the $10 million range, depending on what local leaders are willing to spend and get permission to do from state officials.

“There would be a sand, you’d have a 30-foot-wide beach area with sea oats, dune vegetation and palm trees between the rail and the parking,” West said. “We’d pick up the asphalt material that’s there and under the asphalt and back fill with clean, white beach-quality sand.”

Orange Beach has been consulting with Hardy and he has presented a plan to the city for getting the area open to the public again.

“Do some aesthetic improvements that will allow us to do easy maintenance to keep up pedestrian traffic up out there and fishing, people just walking along looking at the water,” Hardy said. “Get functionality back quickly and at a relatively low cost compared to the big numbers the DOT got to replace the seawall.”

Hardy said moving parking back further inland away from the damaged wall would allow for those improvements.

“What we’re proposing is to pull the parking back far enough to where if we lose sediment and sand, and you’re seeing that all along the entire length of the seawall,” Hardy said. “We’re saying pull the parking back and if we lose sand, so what, we lose sand.

“Our parking is pulled back far enough, our lights, everything is pulled back far enough.”

West said the rail would stay where it is and people would walk across the sandy area right up the pass like always.

“The rail would stay, we’d leave it right where it is,” West said. “You could drop a bait right over the rail right into the pass. The rail’s in good shape and sufficiently supported.”

A deck of some kind would also be incorporated into the plan, West said, to accommodate wheelchairs.

Kennon said the fix is not a permanent one, but a way to bring back what was once a popular spot that is now an unsightly mess.

“We proposed this and it’s got to go to John Cooper and Gunter Guy. I talked to both of those guys and they seem to be on board,” Kennon said. “We’ve offered to have it fixed. Common sense in my mind would say there’s no reason why they wouldn’t let us. It does eliminate an eyesore and creates functionality. We’re working on it.”

Cooper is the director of ALDOT and Gunter is the director of the Alabama Department of Conservation and Natural Resources.

Parts of the plan could be permanent, West said.

“The nice thing about this plan is you could build it in just a few months and if it took you three or four or five or six years to find money to rebuild the wall completely, at least you’d have use of it,” West said. “And another bonus is you’d create a very attractive park-like area and remove that eyesore which sticks out like a sore thumb.

“There’s only one place like Alabama Point, and its right there. It’s one of the prettiest inlets on the Gulf Coast and it really is a shame it looks the way it looks.”

Other parts of the plan being considered are permanent bathrooms to replace the port-a-lets and a fish-cleaning house.

“I’m hopeful we’ll get to do this experiment,” West said. “I’m excited about it. The Department of Conservation and ALDOT have approved of concept to this point. Now they want to see a more detailed plan.”