2020: the Biggest Island News of the Year
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Inside the Moon Island Holiday A2 On the Rocks A11 Snowy Plover A14 Three Chords and the Truth A16 Issue 872 The 27° 37' 0.5952'' N | 97° 13' 21.4068'' W Island Free The voiceMoon of The Island since 1996 December 31, 2020 Weekly www.islandmoon.com FREE Photo by Debbie Noble Around The Flour Bluff Island 2020: The Biggest Island Plays Veterans By Dale Rankin What a year it has been Around The Memorial in Island. It has been a year of change and it seems 2020 in retrospect News of the Year Fourth Round of will be a tipping point in Island development. As things go our little Playoffs sandbar has fared better than many Water Exchange Bridge Island Grocery Store parts of the country as the Covid virus January 2 brought new visitors to our shores and Canal Set to Open many of whom bought property and decided to stay. Buc Stadium As 2020 winds down realtors, showdown contractors, mortgage lenders, and The Hornet Football Team beat appraisers report booming sales Victoria West 28-21 in Alamo with a lack of inventory becoming Stadium to advance to the Fourth a problem not only on Padre Island Round of the UIL State Playoffs. The but in Port Aransas and across the Hornets will play the Corpus Christi city. Condominiums have been in Veterans Memorial Eagles in the 5A big demand as well as empty dry Division 1 Regional Final Playoff lots which are now regularly selling on Saturday, January 2, 2:00 p.m. at in the $80,000 and up range. The Corpus Christi Buc Stadium. few waterfront lots still available are disappearing quickly and single- In the First Round the Hornets family home building continues at claimed a Bi-District Championship the brisk pace we have seen for the The new canal dug in 2020.. Photo by Jason Cox. with a win over the Brownsville Pace past several years. Vikings. The Hornets then defeated By Dale Rankin The project was five years in the making but as 2020 the Southside Cardinals 31-21 in The Year of Covid brought visitors wound down the IGA Market grocery store on SPID is the Area Round to advance to the Two of the biggest projects which began on Padre Island to The Island that had never been stocking the shelves and hiring employees in preparation Regional Semifinals then became in 2020 are related and both have been more than a decade here before and property prices for opening in early January 2021. Regional Semifinal Champions with in planning. comparatively lower than those the win over Victoria West. The project was plagued from its beginning in 2015 by in metropolitan areas across the In mid-2020 crews began excavating 3200 linear feet of state and federal regulations regarding the man-made state encouraged them to buy. As a new canal that will connect the existing Island canal Ticket Information wetlands where the Balli Center is located. Construction lockdowns began in cities across system to the long-awaited Water Exchange Bridge which delays related to the Covid virus and the newly installed Online Pre-Game Ticket Sales. Texas in the spring traffic across began construction in late 2020. By years end the new sewer line caused the projected opening of the store by the JFK Causeway reached peaks canal had bulkheads in place and work was well underway Public Ticket Sales began on November to be pushed back but as the year wound down at levels never seen before with on the Water Exchange Bridge. Wednesday, 12-30, and run through 86,000 vehicles in a single day. developers Lori and Moshin Rasheed have the store ready Midnight Friday, 1-1-1 Canal cont. on A4 to open its doors. The high traffic counts and packed Three years and up need a ticket area beaches led county officials to (student = 3yr old – 12th grade). restrict beach traffic and eventually Gameday Ticket Sales Begin at close beaches to discourage visitors. Bob Hall Pier Lively Beach Opens 12:30 p.m. on game day at Buc In this issue we chronicle the many Stadium. Gameday Ticket Price: new commercial developments Destroyed for Business on $10.00 Adults and Students on Padre Island. The year saw the CCISD Social Distance Seating first new waterfront hotel open its Guideline at Buc Stadium is as doors at Lively Beach and similar Zahn Road follows: developments underway. The biggest new projects are the completion of 4 People to a Group (Pod) / Mask the privately-funded canal to the site On Required of the Water Exchange Bridge along Only CLEAR bags are allowed in SPID and the beginning of work on stadium the bridge. Over time those projects collectively move forward plans No Re-Entry to Stadium once you that have been on the Coming Soon leave agenda for decades and should lead No Refunds to the development of a new marina on Lake Padre in 2021. Radio and Audio Stream Information The saddest story of 2020 has to be Hurricane Hanna tore the “T” structure off the end of The first new development on the Padre Island beaches the dismantling of the turtle rescue Bob Hall Pier in July and damaged the pier to the point The game will be be broadcast live since 1983 opened at Lively Beach on Zahn Road in 2020. program at Padre Island National the county officials voted in December to tear it down on the radio on 1230 AM and 95.1 The $20 million project at the site of the former Tortuga Seashore. The program and its and rebuild. The pier will be closed through at least the FM. Download the Tune in App and Dunes housing development opened as a hotel in August annual turtle releases have become summer of 2022 and likely longer as the current structure search Corpus Christi Sports Radio with 46 units. When complete Lively Beach will have 138 part of the heart of Island life but must be demolished and planning work on the new pier 1230 to listen. For live coverage of rooms available in six separate pods with 23 rooms each. for reasons they have not articulated has yet to begin. the game follow Flour Bluff Sports. the managers at PINS have decided Bob Hall cont. on A4 Go Hornets! to essentially defund the program to the point that it will not be the same beloved program. It is sad to see what is happening but there seems to be A little Island history little that Islanders can do to reverse the process. One of the lessons of 2020 is that 2020 Marks the Apex of the PINS Turtle Rescue Program the issue of traffic control on SPID between the JFK Causeway and Planned reduction in patrols, public releases, monitoring of nests and funding spell Commodores has to be addressed. The number of accidents has doom for the program as 2021 begins increased dramatically in 2020 as By Dale Rankin traffic counts jumped and the speed limit remained at 55 mph. When the 2020 looks to mark the end of scheduled for implementation in traffic light was placed at the SPID/ the Kemp’s ridley turtle recue 2021 will may mean the retirement Aquarius intersection city traffic program as Islanders have know it of the long-time manager of the engineers told the Island Strategic for more than thirty years. program Dr. Donna Shaver leaving Action Committee that at least one Barring a change in policy at the future of the program in doubt. more traffic light would be needed Padre Island National Seashore the The park service has not responded to to slow traffic between that location Sea Turtle Science and Recovery a request to rescind the cuts meaning and the Commodores intersection Program at the park faces severe they will take effect in the new budget and the number of serious crashes budget cuts in the 2021 funding year. there in 2020 bears that out. There cycle placing its future in doubt. At the heart of the looming cuts is currently bond money set aside to the program is a study issued in to rework the roadway, including The cuts which if implemented June, 2020 by the Regional Office the access road, from Jackfish to will see a reduction in patrols of the National Park Service and Commodores in 2021 and city monitoring the nests of Kemp’s competition for a portion of the $7.8 planners are also gathering traffic ridley turtles, a reduction, if not billion settlement from the Deepwater data for a redesign of the SH 361/ elimination of the popular turtle Horizon oil spill in 2010 between the Commodores intersection. releases which have been a staple of the park for decades, and the turtle rescue program at PINS and It’s been an interesting year and the stoppage of the long-held practice similar programs on the East Cost of pace of change here looks like it has of relocating the nests to safe the United States. moved into a higher gear –whether incubation areas to avoid them we longtime Islanders favor it or not. being in danger from vehicular Turtle releases like this jone will become a thing Hang in there everybody and say beach traffic. The cuts as currently of the past in 2021. hello if you see us Around The Island History cont. on A4 in 2021. December 31, 2020 Island Moon A 2 Holidays Around the Islands Christmas Day at the beach. Deer on beach by Mike Thompson. Photo by Mary Craft.