A year after crews broke ground on a $12 million overhaul of Isla Blanca Park's RV campground, the project still isn't finished, leaving hundreds of camping spots unavailable just as the busy winter camping season approaches on South Padre Island. The campground's more than 600 full-hookup RV sites have sat unavailable for the past year while crews upgrade the electrical, water and sewer infrastructure beneath them, and the people who use the park every day say the slow pace has become the talk of the island.
According to MySA, Cameron County launched the overhaul of Isla Blanca Park's beach access as part of a project to expand and modernize the RV campgrounds at the southernmost tip of South Padre Island. Cameron County awarded the contract to general contractor Mor-Wil, LLC, with engineering design handled by GDJ Engineering, according to Texas Border Business, which reported that construction officially began on October 1, 2025, with an estimated 12-month timeline. That timeline has now effectively expired with the campground still shuttered.
Tommy Saenz, known online as Tiki Tommy, treks to the park at dawn nearly every day to deliver surf reports to locals and tourists. He told the station's report that the project is still a mess and that construction is proceeding very slowly, a firsthand account that echoes the frustration bubbling up across South Padre Island's tourism community as the delay drags on.
A Single Closure Meant to Save Time and Money
The scale of the shutdown traces back to a deliberate engineering choice. Project engineers selected a single-phase construction approach that closed the entire interior campground at once rather than staging the work in stages, according to the Port Isabel-South Padre Press. The idea was to eliminate complex traffic management on site and accelerate the completion schedule, and officials anticipated the full closure would lower total project expenses.
To soften the blow, the county kept 43 exterior RV sites open outside the park's main toll gates near Dirty Al's Restaurant and set up roughly 26 to 40 temporary dry camping spots, per the same outlet's reporting. Reservations for those alternative spots were restricted to phone or in-person bookings, making it harder for displaced seasonal visitors to simply log on and rebook.
Winter Texans and Local Businesses Feel the Pinch
The closure of more than 600 camping spots has rippled well beyond the park's gates. In June 2025, members of the South Padre Island Convention and Visitors Advisory Board raised concerns that shutting down more than 600 RV spaces would displace long-term winter visitors and cut into seasonal spending for island businesses, since Winter Texans account for a substantial share of the island's winter retail and dining revenue.
Confusion over the timeline has also played out in public. Questions have circulated on South Padre Island Concierge, a Facebook community page where tourists seek local information, with one user asking in June when the RV park improvements would be completed and another asking, per a Facebook reply, whether construction had even started. Cameron County Parks Director Joe Vega called Isla Blanca Park the crown jewel of the Texas Gulf Coast but deferred questions about the overhaul delay to Cameron County Engineer Jeff Worsham, who is leading the renovation. Worsham did not respond to messages from MySA by publication, and Cameron County Judge Eddie Treviño Jr. also did not respond.
Beach, Jetties and Launch Views Remain Open
Despite the campground closure, day-use visitors have kept access to the park's mile-long beach, fishing jetties, walking trails and boat ramps for a $12 vehicle entry fee, with that fee waived for advance concert ticket holders, Texas Border Business reported. The park's 700 acres also include granite jetties popular with anglers, two public pavilions connected by a seaside boardwalk, the Cameron County Amphitheater, bait and snack concessions, and beach gear rentals.
Isla Blanca Park has drawn national recognition even amid the construction mess, having been named the best beach access in Texas by USA Today readers in 2024, 2025 and 2026. Part of that appeal comes from its front-row seat to SpaceX activity: the park sits roughly five miles across the Laguna Madre from Starbase, making it one of the primary public viewing grounds for Starship rocket launches, according to Starbase Events, with launch days routinely drawing thousands of spectators to the jetties and shoreline. Hoodline has previously covered the legal fight over public shoreline access tied to those same Starbase launch closures.
Part of a Decade-Long Investment
The current overhaul is the latest chapter in a much longer spending history at the park. Cameron County had already invested nearly $30 million upgrading Isla Blanca Park under a coastal parks master plan launched in 2014, according to MyRGV, with earlier phases adding beachfront pavilions, boardwalks and improved parking. The county also opened the 6,791-square-foot Cameron County Amphitheater and Event Center at Dolphin Cove in October 2019, a $5.7 million venue funded through hotel-motel venue taxes that has continued hosting concerts and festivals even as the campground sat closed.
County leaders have used fee increases before to fund this kind of long-term investment: Commissioners approved rate hikes for RV rental sites back in November 2017 specifically to generate revenue for multi-phase park improvements and to match market rates at other coastal facilities, per MyRGV. The renovation is expected to ultimately create a new row of RV campsites and realign Dodson Street and Emerald Street to improve traffic flow, with campers able to reserve a site for anywhere from one day to several months once the work wraps. For now, though, the overhaul remains part of a multiyear, multimillion-dollar effort to attract visitors that has yet to deliver its promised finish line.
