CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas — The Sunrise Beach RV Park in Mathis could eventually change leadership from the City of Corpus Christi to the City of Mathis.
It's a dream Mathis City Manager Mike Barrera is hoping will come in the near future.
"The City of Mathis can't afford to negotiate to buy it at this point in time, but I think that would be a great thing for the city of Mathis to do in the future. To make a deal with the City of Corpus Christi to, if not own that property, but to lease it," he said.
Barrera said the lake and RV park are just over 3 miles from Mathis, but the city has no real connection or control over either.
"I don't know if we could as a city try to be a profit generating enterprise, we could surely use it to be as a nonprofit for may by holding other types of events for the city as well," he said. "As for certain types of citizens, I don't have access to these types of facilities, so I think it would be a win-win, you know again it's just a dream."
The latest profit and loss statement from 2020 shows that the RV park's camping rentals produced a little over $312,000 in revenue, but cost the city over $254,000 to operate. That left a profit of just over $58,000. Corpus Christi District 3 Councilman Roland Barrera said council would listen to a proposal from Mathis to take over the park.
"You know I'm sure it's something that we could explore where they wanted to take the opportunity to run it and we could look at some contractual agreement. You know I'm open minded to it," he said.
At-Large Councilmember Mike Pusley is hoping city staff will look at the idea.
"Our city manager needs to sit down and determine if that's something that looks like it might be a financial game for the City Of Corpus Christi to do something like that," he said.
The City of Corpus Christi has been operating the RV park at Lake Corpus Christi since 2008. While it is showing a profit now, the city was looking at possibly getting out of the RV park business back in 2020 when a number of top city officials believed it was a money losing venture.
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