Town faces identity crisis
After Hurricane Harvey, the ‘Texas Riviera’ confronts its future
PORT ARANSAS, Texas – The house came down with a cacophony that’s become familiar in this coastal town — the moans of excavators middemolition, jaws snapping through what’s left of roofs and walls.
It’s Round 2 of Hurricane Harvey’s ruin. Clouds of dust burst from the cracking walls as Tom Gomez, his arm around his wife, stood at the curb and watched their home’s collapse. With a cellphone, she recorded its fall.
One or two passersby stopped briefly, just long enough to register the newest razing in town.
Newly heaped nests of plywood, nails and shingles are routinely hauled away from empty lots. Some — though not many — have “for sale” signs tacked into their sandy soils. Others offer no clues to their future.
It’s a burgeoning landscape that’s setting the stage for the most vast, rapid change in the Gulf Coast city in nearly 100 years.
It has become common in the months since the storm, especially in one of Port Aransas’ oldest neighborhoods — appropriately dubbed Old Town — where residents have lived for generations.
“There’s a feeling this might be the last chance to do this properly.”
Rick Pratt Museum director who serves on a committee focused on Old Town
Homes and businesses vary wildly in age, values and style. They span mobile homes and contemporary frames to bungalows and cottages. Some are seemingly improvised through additions over the years — distinguished as much by personality as place in motley shapes, sizes and facades.
It’s a clear contrast to the street panoramas of neighborhoods on the southern end of town, where houses tend to be larger, more uniform — and, almost without exception, more expensive.
Gomez plans to rebuild, replacing his home — an adjoined pair of older cottages before demolition — with a house that will fit in as much as possible with the surrounding neighborhood. He said that’s “a little hard to do when not much is standing.”
“Once this area of town starts to redevelop, it’s going to be a lot different,” he said over the grinding of the excavator, insulation catching against the rims of his glasses. “I think more businesses are going to pop up. It will be more of a destination.”
Though Gomez plans to stay — the home was fully insured — it’s uncertain how many others will do the same.
A time of change
It’s often said fondly that Port Aransas is the place where misfits fit in.
It’s the kind of place where you could spot a millionaire and boat hand sitting side by side at the bar, recalling their best “big fish” stories — and be completely unable to tell the difference between the two.
It’s the Texas Riviera, where the seas aren’t blue and the sand isn’t white, but it’s always the island and always fiercely loved. Consensus on what Port Aransas is beyond that, and what it should be, is elusive.
Like many communities with a tourism economy, it struggles to find balance between a livelihood dependent on visitors and a town in which to live.
The push-pull over development, housing, cost of living and tradition isn’t new, but after Harvey, which swept through last August, those talks have taken on a more urgent tone.
One hundred to 125 houses have been demolished, and 25 to 50 more are likely to be razed.
The bones of some structures were weakened with age, others built to now-obsolete building codes that simply couldn’t withstand Hurricane Harvey’s furious wind and waters. Some could be salvageable but impractical to repair. Some are likely casualties of insurance shortfalls.
The cost of building to today’s standards may be a significant dividing line for residents on whether to stay or go. Depending on how the original structure was built, it may cost thousands of dollars to bring it up to required codes.
Though city officials are sympathetic to financial hardship, not enforcing those regulations could lead to the entire city’s disqualification from the National Flood Insurance Program, said Planning and Development Director Rick Adams.
“This is exactly why the rules exist as they do — to get those properties and those buildings higher up,” he said. “People don’t want to necessarily hear that when it’s going to become problematic to do it … but common sense tells you this is your bite at the apple to hopefully keep this from happening as badly as it did again.”
Those who lived in older homes most affected by the storm were primarily service workers and middle-class professionals such as teachers.
That population had been dwindling for many years amid higher insurance premiums, increasing property taxes and fewer and more expensive housing options.
Assessed property values fell by $300 million after the storm but had been on an upswing.
Though the number of single-family residences rose by about 6% from 2015 to pre-Harvey 2017, appraisals far outpaced construction, and total market values skyrocketed by about 25%, according to county records.
Identity
There’s concern in the community that it could break away from the quirky and charming, the largely homegrown businesses and independent disposition. But refusing opportunity could be shortsighted.
In neighborhoods where a scatter of dwellings were questionably inhabitable before the storm, there can be new investment and a chance to strengthen the economy.
Last fiscal year, hotel and motel taxes generated $4.9 million.
Tourism is what the city was built on, said Bruce Clark, a city councilman and owner of several souvenir shops.
“I don’t know of many sleepy fishing villages that have 5 million visitors a year, or a Sandfest that brings 50,000 people to it in a weekend,” he said.
The city’s economic model was itself borne out of a pair of storms, said Port Aransas Museum Director Rick Pratt. Before hurricanes in 1916 and 1919, Port Aransas was sustained by its seaport. The town had to be reinvented after the loss of the port, he said — emerging as a tourist hub in the 1920s, shunning Prohibition and promising good times.
After Harvey, it’s important that the community discuss its character and protect and embrace its historical features, Pratt said. “There’s a feeling this might be the last chance to do this properly,” said Pratt, who serves on a committee focused on Old Town.
The committee and some residents push for a more distinct atmosphere in Old Town, which was designated by the City Council several years ago as a historic district. The group encourages construction to have a more traditional look and wants to center housing development around full-time residents — avoiding big-box stores and shortterm rentals.
The balance between renovation and residents’ needs is still being worked out.
Port Aransas has long been a spot where visitors have come for a good time, and that must be taken into account, Pratt said.
“We’ve got to preserve that part of the atmosphere. … That’s one very big need that we have,” he said. “The other is we have to have enough people who live here and call it home to give it direction. We don’t want it to become entirely just a motel on the highway.”
This story was produced in partnership with the Ravitch Fiscal Reporting Program at the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism.