b'A North Beach Canal: the issue that made the difference in Mayors race.In 2019, hundreds of Corpus Christians turned out to voice their support for a Riverwalk-style canal on North Beach, both to fix chronic flooding problems and to create a mile-long entertainment zone. Then-Mayor McComb denied the drainage problem, while Carolyn Vaughn and Now-Mayor Paulette Guajardo supported addressing the problem as a City utility project.got-away, however, was one of its own. Oilman and entrepreneur Bob Rowling, who grew up here before relocating to Dallas, is the single most financially-successful person to come from Corpus Christi and has for years owned Omni Hotel Corporation among his many assetsnot just our local Omni Hotel, but all Omni Hotels in the world. In the mid-2000s, Rowling hired some of the best planners in the theme park industry to create a proposed plan for redevel-oping the bayfront near the old Memorial Coliseum, which had been vacated and was rapidly deteriorating. City leaders snuffed at the plan, kicked the rhetorical sand in Rowlings face, and he was gone for good. His company is still the largest private landowner downtown, assets of which include some of the biggest tracts on Shoreline Boulevard and Water Street.When new people see all that we have to offer in Corpus Christi, they just cannot believe itand they really cant believe all they can get on the water, in this beautiful, urban setting, for far less than what companies and their employees are paying to reside in these huge, loud, congested, and sometimes dangerous big cities, said Guajardo.The vast majority of that $52 billion invested here has been in the big, industrial plants that are connected to the Port of Corpus Christi, many of which are built on city land located across the bay in San Patricio County. Some of those employees live in the city, but most reside closer to the plants in North Bay, all the way up to Rockport. Justifiably, the regional Economic De-velopment Corporation tends to focus on industrial development and not so much on filling millions of square feet of vacant office and retail space, especially downtown where residential projects like The Cosmopolitan are thriving.We are forming the Mayors EDC sub-committee with the mission of attracting teams of employees from big companies located in big citiesand not just in Texas, from all over the United States, said Mayor Guajardo. Whether its twenty, fifty or a hundred people, we have beautiful office space to offer at great rates and with real incentives, plus a vibrant, growing city in one of the most naturally beautiful places in the world! We want Apple, we want Tesla, we want those tech professionals who we realize operate in smaller teams but can work and live anywhere.With a new, monumental Harbor Bridge coming, along with even more industrial and port expansion, Corpus Christis era of historic growth is upon usand our canvass is largely blank. As the pandemic ends, conventions and group travel will return. Although we have a large, modern convention facility at the American Bank Center, our lack of a major convention hotel costs the city thousands of visitors each year. North Beach, twenty blocks of which will be re-united after the old bridge is removed, has been the subject of heated debate and controversy around the construction of a Riverwalk-style canal that will create a huge entertainment zone, while fixing the flooding problem. Lake Padre on North Padre Island should be the site of a billion-dollar resort akin to Sandestin in Florida, with its immediate boating access to the Gulf of Mexico and beautiful ocean beach, but is still home to a just a few condos and a bar, more than three decades after being completed.Like San Antonio in the early 1980s or Austin in the early 2000s, the 2020s could mark the dawn of Corpus Christi and the Coastal Bends Golden Agebut like in those cities in those periods, this city will require fresh energy in leadership whose priorities are only centered on what is good for the entire community and not just a select few. With Mayor Paulette Guajardo working hand-in-hand with like-minded leaders like Nueces County Judge Barbara Canales, the possibilities for the Coastal Bend are truly limitless.36 THE COASTAL BEND GUIDE TheCoastalBend.com'