Posted on 06/07/2008 12:47:19 PM PDT by Oshkalaboomboom
My Brother-In-Law, my sister and their family have lived outside of Naples, Italy for years. He supports the Navy as a GS worker and their policy is that you can only spend so many years overseas before you have to come back to the states. One of their options is supporting a base in Corpus Christi, TX. My sister has looked online and found that a lot of people trash the place. Is the city really that bad (remember, they lived near Naples, home of mafiosi and piles of trash)? Are there safe towns with good schools are are a reasonable commute to the navy base? She is looking for opinions before he formally puts in for the job so any opinions, good or bad, are most welcome. Thanks.
Everytime I think of the place it reminds me of the 'Texas Riviera', a strip of Ocean Drive along the bayfront full of fabulous mansions and houses.
What does 'trash' the place mean? Talk bad about the place or that there is lots of trash/garbage there?
Corpus Christi is a beautiful city with nice beaches.
Hi...
I live in Corpus. Have for 6 years or so. I came here from working and playing in the Houston, TX area, and I came here on purpose. I didn’t move for a job or anything like that. I moved here because I could and I wanted to.
If you’d like, PM me what you’d like to know and I’ll tell you what I can.
We love it! We live on North Padre Island and our kids spent their middle school and high school years here. They wouldn’t go anywhere else.
Chasaway
For my wife, moving from the DC to South Texas was pretty rough. At the time me lived there (2000-2002) there were NO Starbucks (a necessity for the medical profession apparently) in the area - except in Austin. Other than that, I liked Texas. If your family likes hunting, there are TONS of great places - including some that offer African Safari-like conditions & animals (Impala, etc.)
Fishing in the Gulf was AWESOME, and the beaches in general were alot of fun. Corpus was not the absolute best town I've ever lived in (that would be San Diego, though now with the prices or real estate and everything else it would probably not be as much fun), but it is certainly not the worst place either.
Like anything or anyplace elese, it will be what they make of it. Texas IS different. Some folks love it, some not so much (though they are usually GD Yankees!).
Corpus Christi is a lovely town. Yes, it has its mix of neighborhoods, from very expensive to somewhat run down, but I am certain that your sister can find a wonderful neighborhood for her family.
I don't know anything about the government schools. By law government schools are, politically, culturally, and religiously god-less throughout the nation. I wouldn't recommend one regardless of where a person lives.
There’s a problem with illegal aliens, but we have that all through Texas. Property taxes are high, but no income tax. The cost of living is less than half of California, if that gives you an idea. Houston and San Antonio are within a reasonable driving distance if you want to go to the “big city”.
Places to live, well, just pick your price range.
I remember it fondly from Navy Advanced Navigation School (where we were winged). It’s a lot like Coney Island but with wonderful white sand beaches that go on forever and a Baptist church every block.
Just curious, what is the most expensive town with the nicest homes and schools? Preferably Republican run...
Corpus is in a nice transistion zone from the humid East Texas tall pines to the desert conditions of South Texas.
The climate is pretty good, but not great. No place along the Gulf Coast truly rates as great in that regard.
It gets hot and sticky, and you can’t do much about that.
It’s just less stickier than other choices.
Other than that, it’s just a city. It’s not known for its fine restauarants or even its scenic beauty. It’s a port city, a center for regional agriculture, and a great place if you like saltwater fishing.
It has a decent and convenient airport, although you’re not going to get a non-stop flight from there to Tokyo.
There is more of an hispanic influence there than in most Texas cities, but it’s mostly with an American flavor. You’ll lowrider cars there, which are fun to giggle at.
You could do worse.
Don’t forget to mention that is is ground zero for a hurricane one of these days. Just commit to taking a few days off and being one of the first out of town a good three days before it hits. If you wait to the last day you won’t make it out.
Warning people of that is like warning them of the possibility of earthquakes in California or tornadoes in the midwest.
Yeah but ....
I live in tornado country and I have a shelter. I watch the storms very closely when they come.
I guess earthquakes are kinda the same. Though one can improve one’s odds by choosing carefully what sort of house one lives in. Can’t do much about a freeway overpass falling on you though.
What a lot of noobs to hurricane country don’t figure into their deliberations however is the difficulty in getting out in an evacuation. Which is what I referenced.
The Houston evacuation for Hurricane Rita was totally botched. Our freeways were such that people moved four miles in 12 hours.
People literally died on the freeways because of the heat. My wife was a “critical employee” at a hospital, so we didn’t try to evacuate. But she sure saw the people coming in to the hospital from the freeway one block away.
She also saw that stranded travelers were siphoning gasoline from the the employees’ cars in the hospital parking lot. It was a madhouse. Mad Max in Houston.
You’ll never have that same problem in Corpus simply because the population is tiny in comparison to the Houston/Galveston area. We’ve made improvements in response to that collosal evacuation disaster, such as making it easy to turn both sides of the freeways into outbound evacuation routes. It has yet to be tested, though.
I wouldn’t be afraid to relocate to the Gulf Coast because of hurricanes, although I think living on the barrier islands is foolish. The truly destructive part of the hurricane is far smaller than the satellite image looks. It’s not a 500 mile wide tornado. More like 40.
Sucks to be in that 40, but if you’re 80 or 100 miles away from the eye, you’re going to get pool furniture moved around. If you’re on the west side of the eye, you can be closer than that with even less trouble.
While people were dying on the Houston freeways trying to evacuate, I had the surreal experience of being the only one there in a subdivision with well more than 100,000 residents. I had hot northerly winds, and almost no rain. It knocked down a few fences around me, but that’s it.
The eye of the hurricane missed me by about 50 miles.
Hurricane Andrew hit me nearly head on. They eye was three miles from my house, and branches were hitting with the force to break brick. So, I’m not minimizing this. I’m just saying that it can be easy to get overly freaked out.
Trash as in boring, high crime, bad local government, run down neighborhoods. Do a Google search on living in Corpus Christi and you will see what we've seen--it doesn't look good at all, that is why she asked me if I could find out more about the place.
Yes, there are small areas with that problem in CC, but that is like many areas near any military base in the US. Just like Ft. Hood, Bliss, Dix, have a few bad areas around them, CC has a small area close to the main gate that has the rough joints. Get further away into the actual city, there are very nice neighborhoods.
As another said, Rockport is a very nice town. Quite a commute on a daily basis though. My sister lived in CC for years and were about two blocks from CC Bay. That area was very nice and only a few miles to CCNAS. She actually stayed there during a CAT 3 hurricane one year.
We also have a friend who still lives there, but she said if another hurricane hits, she may move back inland. She said she is getting too old to pack up and take her dogs out of harms way for over a week.
The seafood and Mexican food is great there. The cost of living is cheaper than Austin and most other jobs pay quite well.
Ping!
I lived near the Naval Base when I was a teenager. That area, Flour Bluff, is very trashy & run down looking.
Corpus is like any other mid sized town, it has good & bad areas. There are a few decent restaurants, lots of shopping areas, they have a minor league hockey and baseball team. There is not a lot of traffic and the atmosphere is very laid back.
The wind blows dang near all the time, which helps in the summer. But in the summer it is very sticky. The Corpus “beach” sucks, but Padre Island is pretty nice.
Check out some of the surrounding towns, Portland is a nice town & has a good school district. Commute time to the base is not that long.
Personally, I love the Coastal Bend area and am trying to convince my husband to move back there.
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