The new Harbor Bridge will tower over downtown Corpus Christi’s tallest structure, One Shoreline Plaza, according to designs shared at a meeting May 23. The meeting was called a charette, which is when stakeholders in a project are called together to resolve conflicts. About 200 people were invited to share their opinions and suggestions on the Harbor Bridge project.
Those suggestions will be worked into the design as the project moves along over the next five years, said Lorette Williams of Flatiron/Dragados, the company hired to build the bridge. 
The Texas Department of Transportation agreed in 2014, when the bridge project was first approved, to use a fast-track process known as design-build. That means construction can progress on some parts of the bridge while designers work on the details of other parts. Only about a dozen projects statewide have been cleared in the past few years for design-build by TxDOT.
The two towers that hold the bridge’s distinctive cables will dwarf any other downtown structure. Current designs have them at 538 feet tall. One Shoreline Plaza’s twin peaks are 410 feet for the north tower and 374 feet for the south tower. The next tallest structure in the area, Voestalpine Texas’s reduction tower at its iron manufacturing plant in Ingleside, is 450 feet. 
Another part of the plan subject to tweaking as construction continues is the LED lighting. The end result should be breathtaking, said Linda Figg, president and CEO of Figg Bridge Group. 
“We are looking to make this a work of art,” she said. “It will be something special for the area.”
The luminaire technology that will be used for the lighting will be more energy-efficient than the LED lighting on the old Harbor Bridge. It will also include a wider range of adjustable colors. 
A cable-stay bridge, the new span will provide 205 feet of vertical clearance, expected to accommodate the world’s largest ships. The current bridge at 138 feet would fit nicely under the new one, which will be six lanes and include bicycle and pedestrian pathways.
Expected to have a life-span of 100 years, the new bridge will be the third-largest cable-stayed bridge in the world. At 1,655 feet, it will be the longest cable-stay construction in the United States.