A Little Island history The Story of the Seawall By Dale Rankin She was built without permits in the early 1960s and it took the state a decade to figure that out and when they did they tried to get her torn down. By that time buildings had already sprung up behind its protective wall and property owners fought back. The Michael J. Ellis Seawall is 4216 feet long and is the Island’s first defense against hurricanes but, no matter, rules are rules and according to the state the seawall had to go. The fight continued until, finally, in 1974 a district court judge affirmed the seawall’s right to stay put. That was the good news. The bad news was the wording in the judge’s ruling was ambiguous and the state’s property line ran right through the lobbies of the buildings located there. As a result financing for developments was almost impossible to get since a clear title was unobtainable. Property values plunged and development came to a halt. The seawall survived Hurricane Beulah in 1967 and Hurricane Celia in 1970. But the threat of Beulah spurred property owners along the seawall to form the Seawall Maintenance Agreement which established a fund for seawall upkeep. Then in 1980 along came Hurricane Allen, one of the strongest hurricanes in recorded history. Allen reached Category 5 status on three separate occasions and was one of only two hurricanes in recorded history with sustained winds of 190 mph. When Allen slammed into the Texas Coast between North and South Padre Islands the dirty (northeast) side of the storm pushed a nine-foot wall of water onto The Island and the only thing between it and Island homes was the seawall, and it paid the price. It was too much for it to handle as the rising water over capped the seawall and ran behind and under the concrete shell of a structure and the seawall, in effect, collapsed under its own weight. The city and property owners along the seawall tried in vain to get help in rebuilding but it was not to be; the seawall was a privately-owned structure and would have to be rebuilt with private money. In 1982 property owners were paying annual fees of .75 cents per linear foot of developed seawall and .35 cents for every linear foot of undeveloped property which was enough to maintain the seawall but not rebuild it. For months after the storm residents in Gulfstream Condominiums were awakened in the night by loud cracking sounds as more and more pieces of the morose seawall broke away. She had saved the Island but there was no one to save her. The seawall sat in a rubble of uncertainty until 1983 when property owners amended the Seawall Maintenance Agreement to assess themselves a one-time fee to raise the $1.4 million needed to rebuild and in the same year paid $22,430 to buy insurance against another catastrophic storm. For the Million Dollar Inn on the seawall, which was already vacant when Allen roared in, the storm was the last straw. The only remnant of the once proud hotel now is the top of a concrete wall running across a bare patch of sand, and somewhere down below, what’s left of the swimming pool. But even as the seawall went back up property values didn’t follow. The uncertainty of having the state claim land 100 feet back from the landward side of the structure cast a cloud over ownership and served to dampen interest in development. Finally in 1995, with help from the City of Corpus Christi, a bill was passed by the Texas Legislature that moved the property line to the foot of the seawall on the seaward side. According to the minutes of the city council meeting on December 17, 1996, part of the agreement between the property owners and the city that the property owners would purchase land to build a parking lot behind the seawall and when that was done vehicles would be removed from the beach in front of it. On December 29, 1996, less than two weeks after the council voted to approve the deal, property owners passed a special assessment which raised $471,304 to buy 2.9 acres of land to become the site of the 310-car parking lot that was opened in 2009. In 2010 the seawall and adjacent beach were renamed in honor of Michael J. Ellis, the founder of the Island Moon Newspaper, who passed away that year. Since the 1960s changes in state and federal regulations would make it almost impossible to construct a new seawall today. But the grand old lady that threw herself in front of Hurricane Allen today is once again taking her place center stage as a group of property owners there have begun pushing for help in maintaining both the seawall and the beach, getting them in shape for the next fifty years.
Posted on: Thu, 13 Feb 2014 16:39:34 +0000
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