b'Corpus Christi, and almost every community within the 550,000-population Coastal Bend, has experienced tremendous infrastructure improvements over the past decade, which continue today. Many of these improvements have been centered on public education.The Corpus Christi Independent School District has built over a dozen new campuses and will soon open the regions biggest school, the magnificent new Mary Carroll High School. That will soon be followed by the new Del Mar College Southside campus.The student body at Texas A&M Corpus Christi is approaching 15,000, and housing construction connected to the university has transformed Ennis Joslin Road. Rumors of college football and the requisite stadium, likely to be located near Ennis Joslin and SPID, have circulated for years, but the growth curve continues in the right direction.With the new Harbor Bridge, which we all hope will be opened by 2023, facilities will continue to expand at the Port of Corpus Christi along with well-paying jobs. Our port is the top energy exporter in the United States, and the sixty-foot higher bridge will allow larger ships with greater cargo into and out of the port, many of which are coming through the recently-expanded Panama Canal.All of this historic growth of the Coastal Bend means we could be where Austin was 30 years ago, or San Antonio 40 years agoone of the most promising, emerging investment markets in the world.TheCoastalBend.com'