City leaders hope a state grant could fully fund the project ahead of the summer tourism season.<\/p>\n
CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas \u2014 North Beach could soon look very different as the City of Corpus Christi plans a major effort to restore its shoreline after years of severe erosion.<\/p>\n
City leaders are proposing a beach renourishment project that would rebuild the coastline by adding about 80 cubic yards of sand back to the area.<\/p>\n
Local businesses along the beach say the erosion has already taken a toll.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf it continues to erode it’s going to come too far and it’s going to mess up a lot of things here,\u201d said Thomas Everingham, Assistant Manager at Palace Beachwear, which sits directly across from what used to be the North Beach shoreline.<\/p>\n
As the sand has disappeared, Everingham said the effects have become hard to ignore.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt will flood the roadways, it will actually flood our whole shop here,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Beyond flooding concerns, business owners say the shoreline is also a key draw for visitors — and a critical part of the area\u2019s economy.<\/p>\n
\u201c(From) The Lexington herself, to the aquarium, and the hotels here — we all depend on those yearly numbers. And without those yearly numbers we wouldn’t be able to make it and we’ve been here 25 years doing that,\u201d Everingham said.<\/p>\n
Corpus Christi At-Large Councilman Roland Barrera said the project could be funded through a grant from the Texas General Land Office \u2014 a move that could save the city about $6 million.<\/p>\n
\u201cBecause of the challenges that we’ve had with the weather and hurricanes we’ve been through we qualify for a zero match. So with that a hundred percent can be funded by the general land office,\u201d Barrera said.<\/p>\n
Barrera called the funding opportunity unprecedented during his time on the council.<\/p>\n
\u201cNot in the seven years that I have been on the council. I have never seen anything like this. This is monumental it’s a great deal,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The City has not yet been notified of the final funding amount. Once that decision is made, Barrera said the goal is to move forward with the project before the summer tourism season.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"City leaders hope a state grant could fully fund the project ahead of the summer tourism season. CORPUS…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":170846,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[155,157,156],"class_list":["post-170845","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-corpus-christi","tag-corpus-christi","tag-corpus-christi-headlines","tag-corpus-christi-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/170845","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=170845"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/170845\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/170846"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=170845"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=170845"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=170845"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}