b'C o m m u n i t yThe small town atmosphere that gives Port A its charm also serves as its prime mar-keting advantage as a seaside village. The kind of small downtown setting that visitors enjoy about Boerne, for example, or Gruene near New Braunfels, where you can lazily stroll shop-to-shop and cafe-to-cafe, really does not exist in Port A. Aside from a few rather impersonal-looking strip centers, theres not a bona fide walking tour of Port A to be hadbut the implementation of golf carts, which can operate on city streets with speed limits of 35 mph and under, plus the beach, made nav-igating the towns two-square-mile core palatable and enjoyable for visitors, and created something of a center of critical mass, albeit disjointed, that does not exist anywhere on North Padre Island.Golf cart rental businesses, inspired by the success of those in Port A, have come and gone on Padre Island. The one that is now prospering is definitely a beach play, and not a village play, taking up a location on Whitecap Boulevard on the eastern, beach side of Park Road 22 (SPID). Prior attempts were made at a highway loca-tion near the Park Road 22/Commodores (TX-361) intersection, but impracticali-ty killed the deal. Because golf carts cannot be operated on the 55 mph highway, renters who wanted to go on the beach, since there was no real commercial zone to visit, had to take the longer route on Aquarius Street behind the former Schlit-terbahn property, to the west side of Whitecap and then across Park Road 22 to the beacha trek of no less than 30 minutes, each way.The village dynamic has proven to be a key to Port As success on the high ends of visitor rental and vacation home salesand in a way, it has contributed to the housing affordability problem that plagues the towns hundreds of small business-es, who often cant find workers and have to pay those they can find a premium to commute from Corpus Christi or Aransas Pass. The Palladium apartment complex opened on TX-361 on the way into Port A earlier this year. The property is massive by island standards and features all the wonderful amenities that you will find at upper-mid-level apartment communities anywhere in the Coastal Bend. A brand new, two-bedroom, third-floor unit at The Palladium, most with views of both the Gulf of Mexico at sunrise and Corpus Christi Bay at sunset, rents for about $1,000 per month! But dont get too excited about finding a Port A rental at 1/4 the market ratefor all but 19 of 183 units at The Palladium carry federal income restrictions of $29,000 per year for a single person, and $48,000 for a couple.Housing affordability is much less an acute problem for Padre Island workers, al-though many employers struggle to find them, some even reducing business hours for lack of staff. The great role that Schlitterbahn played on Padre Island was as a center of activity for both visitors in the peak of tourist season, and for locals who enjoyed the park, restaurant and event facilities in the off-season. The staff was much-loved and knew The Island and Flour Bluff because most of them lived there. While so many neighbor-owned small businesses prosper on Padre Island, that center of critical mass is now again missing and is the next big, unavoidable step in The Island at last meeting its potential as a major visitor destination.Packery Channel is where Padre Island becomes Mustang Island, and its dredg-ing was a subject of public debate for decades. The prospect of a new, direct boating route to the Gulf of Mexico at the northern tip of Padre Island was sold as a catalyst for major development, especially at the site known as Lake Padre. In 2006, Packery Channel opened to great fanfare, christened by a delegation of elected of-ficials led by then-Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, who spearheaded the effort to secure federal funds on what was a major infrastructure project. The same year, the lead partner of Asset Development Corporation, Paul Schnexnailder, advocated for a vehicle-free stretch of beach from the new Packery Channel south jetty to the end of the seawall at Whitecap Beach. Intrawest Resorts, the then-Canadian-based company that owned Sandestin Resort on the coast of the Florida Panhandle, was interested in purchasing hundreds of acres on Lake Padre from Schnexnailders company to build a major resort property. The kicker was that Intrawest required a safe, pedestrian beach for its guests, which voters rejected.40THE COASTAL BEND GUIDE TheCoastalBend.com'