North Padre Island’s seawall restoration, backed by $15.5 million in TIRZ funding, begins this fall, promising long-term protection and revitalization for the area.<\/p>\n
PADRE ISLAND, Texas \u2014 The North Padre Island seawall is more than 50 years old, and it is showing. But those broken and damaged pieces will not stay that way for long.<\/p>\n
City officials and seawall property owners gathered at the Gulfstream Condominiums for an announcement.<\/p>\n
\u201cOver $11 million was identified to fully fund this project,\u201d City Manager Peter Zanoni said. \u201cThis morning\u2019s meeting was to inform residents along the seawall that the project is back to being fully funded at $15.5 million and that work will begin this fall on the restoration project.\u201d<\/p>\n
Zanoni said Tax Increment Reinvestment Zone funding helped fill the gap, making it possible to start repairs later this year.<\/p>\n
The news was welcome to several residents, including Lou Lutostanski and Nelda Martinez.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was in disrepair, exposed rebar, things falling apart, and I just think it\u2019s going to add new freshness to the island,\u201d Lutostanski said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is a historic day, and it took a lot of people to make sure this happened,\u201d Martinez said. \u201cI\u2019m very grateful for the team and the leadership that has driven this to today.\u201d<\/p>\n
So where did the remaining funds come from?<\/p>\n
\u201cBy closing out several projects that were completed some time ago and using money from a contingency account, all within that fund, we were able to bring together enough to generate that $11 million,\u201d Zanoni said.<\/p>\n
District 4 City Councilmember Kaylyn Paxson said the seawall will become a city facility moving forward but added that input from property owners will remain an important part of the process.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s along their property, so we need to make sure that, as a partner, we are taking their vision into this,\u201d Paxson said. \u201cThat was a big part of the agreement when we first started this discussion, and we\u2019re committed to seeing that through.\u201d<\/p>\n
Zanoni said the city\u2019s priority goes beyond repairing the seawall.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn the coming months, we\u2019ll analyze how we can reestablish a maintenance fund so that when the $15 million is invested, taxpayer money is protected and, more importantly, the seawall is protected through annual maintenance,\u201d Zanoni said. \u201cWe\u2019ll be making recommendations in the upcoming budget later this summer.\u201d<\/p>\n
Martinez said the seawall will finally be restored to its former glory.<\/p>\n
\u201cOnce this is completed, I think people will see for generations to come that this was a historic day and that many will benefit for years,\u201d Martinez said.<\/p>\n
City officials say construction on the seawall is expected to begin after Labor Day.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"North Padre Island’s seawall restoration, backed by $15.5 million in TIRZ funding, begins this fall, promising long-term protection…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":128168,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[155,157,156],"class_list":{"0":"post-128167","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-corpus-christi","8":"tag-corpus-christi","9":"tag-corpus-christi-headlines","10":"tag-corpus-christi-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128167","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=128167"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128167\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/128168"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=128167"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=128167"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=128167"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}