CORPUS CHRISTI — The Corpus Christi Downtown Management District has taken one more step to ensure growth of businesses and foot traffic in the area continues.
“There’s no reason this city, given its natural wonder right there by the water that this downtown shouldn’t be exploding,” Cale Moore, the co-owner of Nueces Brewing Company, said.
It’s a sentiment Corpus Christians have heard time and time again.
“We really need to develop a place for people to come and stay,” Moore said. “I feel like downtown is a place where people come and eat and they leave.”
But Moore said it’s getting there.
“We saw what the city was trying to do downtown and we were on board and we wanted to be a part of it,” Moore said.
Nueces opened nine months before the COVID-19 pandemic on the corner of Water Street and Kinney Avenue.
“This side of downtown was always kind of untouched and we’ve always been on the outskirts of downtown,” Moore said. “Even though this downtown is pretty small, we always felt like we aren’t a part of it.”
Moore said, even so, the Downtown Management District is a huge help in promoting and helping businesses thrive even if their location wasn’t technically considered part of the DMD.
But in 2025, that will change.
“We have been looking at the possibility of annexation for decades but after El Paso completed theirs in 2021, we realized with 50 percent of the property owners we could submit a petition to our board of directors and the council to approve that expansion,” Alyssa B. Mason, the executive director of the DMD, said.
In an April 16 meeting, Corpus Christi City Council approved expanding the southern border of the DMD between Water and Buford Streets.
“Daily maintenance, branding, landscaping and all of those things to an additional part of the greater downtown area,” Mason said.
Mason said the annexation is expected to bring in more than $55,000 to the area annually in new funding.
The newly annexed properties were already part of the Tax Increment Revitalization Zone or TIRZ #3.
Through a TIRZ, a portion of an area’s property taxes are re-invested in the area.
“By annexing the properties in the area, we’ve set a path for maintenance of the improvements we hope to see over the next decade along Water Street,” Mason said.
The current TIRZ will expire in 2028.
“So even after that happens, if it were not to be renewed, we would have the commitment from the property owners and the downtown area continue to invest in the maintenance, operations, and beautification downtown,” Mason said.
Moore said he hopes this change will make downtown more cohesive.
“We’re really excited you know to actually get the border around us even though downtown has always included us in everything,” Moore said.
Mason said the DMD will officially be providing the maintenance and beautification to the new annexed area in January 2025.
