CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas — The Corpus Christi City Council unanimously approved $14.2 million in sales tax funding, which will go towards renovating the downtown marina, including the docks and boat slips.
City Manager Peter Zanoni said a total of five docks will be replaced as well as about 33 percent of the boat slips, totaling to about 200. Zanoni said newer technology will be used so that the marina will be protected against deterioration from weather including hurricanes.
“We’re real excited about bringing that type of system here. It’s a concrete, floating doc system. It’s real stable, it looks real nice, it’s very durable…it has a 50 year lifespan. What we’re using today has about a 25 year lifespan,” Zanoni said.
He said it is the same type of technology that Port Aransas has, which he said had minimal damage during Hurricane Harvey.
The project will cost around $20 million dollars. Zanoni said the extra money needed for dredging will probably come from insurance proceeds from Hurricane Hanna and the city’s budget, but the city is still looking at its options. He said it will come out of the city’s Type A allocation, which totals over $40 million in the account, and comes from sales tax collection over the years.
Jonathan Atwood, the marina manager, said he grew up in the area and is looking to make the marina cleaner.
“I’m friends with a lot of the other boaters in the area. Being local to the area…I’m very interested in the way the marina looks…both from the seawall and from the water,” Atwood said.
He said he currently doesn’t have a boat out on the marina, but is hoping to have one there one day.
Craig McCann is a student at TAMUCC and a boater who often spends time on the marina. He said he enjoys seeing people walk on the marina, the big boats and the restaurants. He said he comes from Houston and has grown up on the water all his life, saying the marina in Corpus Christi isn’t a bad place.
“There are areas where you can dock, but not everywhere is open because a lot of the slips are taken out and a lot of the fishing areas are kind of sectioned off but there are great points. It is a comparable marina to say Port O’ Connor or Port Aransas,” McCann said.
He said he has a smaller boat on the Island but doesn’t have his boat on the marina because the slips are expensive. He said there could be other improvements like not as many nails laying around among other things.
“I think great improvement to this area would be more hangout areas…maybe a pavilion…maybe some kind of dock you can step out on more than just stepping on the side,” McCann said.
Zanoni said within 60 days the city will begin the process of putting out the request for proposal for a firm that will design and build the pier replacements. The request for proposal will determine when construction begins and ends but Zanoni said he’s hoping the project will only take a year from the start date.
