The company that runs ferry service from the New Bedford State Pier to Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard says it plans to run the ferries this summer season even after much of the pier was closed for repairs.
The pier is a multi-use waterfront facility that is a hub for passenger ferries, cargo operations and the commercial fishing industry. MassDevelopment, the state agency that manages the pier, recently closed most of the pier after an engineering review found that its supporting timber piles and braces were severely deteriorated.
The general manager of Seastreak New Bedford ferries, Christopher Cote, said he doesn’t anticipate the incoming repairs to impact summer service.
Cote explained that the company is using the current winter off-season to make the necessary preparations, saying that they “have a pretty good handle on what we’re doing.”
“We were probably the least inconvenienced because we knew about it. We knew this was happening,” Cote said.
According to Cote, the pier’s closure will limit Seastreak’s operations to a narrow sliver on the northeastern wharf, which the company will have to share with the Cuttyhunk Ferry.
“The only difference is we thought we were going to be able to use more of the pier out in the back and instead we’re confined now to the newest section,” Cote said. “We didn’t realize that the other section was also in disrepair. So, we’ve had to slim down the operation.”
Thanks to the difference in tides in the new location, the company will have to use a barge rather than a rowbridge to load the ferries. And to fit three ferries into smaller, shared space, Seastreak will use the barge to load the ships parked farther from shore. Seastreak is currently working with naval architects to design a barge that will fit the new space, Cote said.
MassDevelopment closed the pier following the review that found that the pier was in need of structural repairs. The review, conducted by the Bellingham, Mass.-based Childs Engineering and published earlier this month, concluded that the pier was “structurally incapable of supporting pedestrian loading or any equipment or storage on either the South or East,” due to the deterioration of its supporting piles and braces. Without repairs, the review said, the pier is at risk of structural failure.
“We closed it right away but it has taken a couple of weeks to properly relocate tenants, which we’ve been working to do ever since then,” MassDevelopment president and CEO Navjeet Bal said.
Work on replacing the pier is expected to take 3 to 4 years according to MassDevelopment’s interim executive vice president of real estate, Gary Walker.
“We have completed the design and permitting of the north wharf replacement that’s about ready to go out to bid,” Walker said.
The review also outlined several repair recommendations. Among them that damaged piles be replaced or fixed and all that concrete elements be repaired.
The November report is not the first assessment of the pier’s integrity. In April 2025, Childs Engineering performed another inspection of the pier, which concluded that the structure was overall in poor condition with deterioration throughout the facility, especially on its timber piles and bracing.
“While we are disappointed that engineering assessments recently revealed far greater concerns than originally anticipated, we must always prioritize safety and immediate needs,” New Bedford state Sen. Mark Montigny wrote in an emailed statement.
Montigny has been active in charting a course for the pier since at least 2008, when he secured a $25 million bond and helped pass a bill that changed the facility into mixed-use.
“This setback will not take away from the fact that State Pier remains one of the most exciting economic development opportunities in New Bedford,” Montigny wrote. “It is far more important that we get this right than to rush toward quick, short-term solutions.”
