Corpus Christi Marina Preparing for Renovations

Strong waves and heavy winds damaged some of the docks at the Corpus Christi Municipal Marina when Hurricane Hanna ripped through the Texas city in July 2020. Corpus Christi is planning to start repairs to its marina this summer as part of a longer-term renovation that will include the replacement of docks and upgrades in services.

The marina has 600 slips, although not all are usable at present. One original fixed wooden dock dates from the marina’s opening in the late 1980s. The other nine docks are floating wood docks, built from the early 1990s through 2016 by the company that is now Meeco Sullivan.

The City has approved the funding necessary to begin the dredging of the south end of the marina sometime this summer. Jonathan Atwood, the marina’s new manager, hopes to begin other renovations in 2022.

“We’re going to be working through the marina, replacing some of the older docks and doing some dredging at the same time,” he said. He’d like to replace the wooden dock as well as the four oldest floating docks. Atwood would like to make some small changes to the layout as well, including the addition of slips for catamarans, which have grown in popularity.

In the past, the marina has not been maintained as well as it should have been, Atwood said. “The problem is that the marina was expanded over the last 20 to 25 years, and in that expansion, there were a lot of things that fell though the cracks, preventative maintenance and other things that needed to be done.”

“We want to bring it back to a solid baseline, where we have a fully functional marina that can handle the storms coming through. After that, I would like to look at possibly expanding the marina, maybe adding some larger slips,” he added.

The north area of the marina is one possible area for expansion. Atwood would like to build a new boater facility to replace one of the two existing ones, and hopes to upgrade the WiFi for boaters in the near future.

Funding for these improvements to Corpus Christi Marina will likely come through the City and from grants, which helped pay for construction of many of the existing docks.