Demolition has begun on a vacant three-story building across from Gaslight Square, up the hill from the city's bayfront.
The former location of Second Baptist Church and School is bound by Tancahua and Carancahua streets, and Furman and Hancock avenues, in what is historically called Uptown.
The building has changed hands several times, but has mostly stood abandoned over the last three decades.
Now, Coastal Bend Demolition Inc.'s Vernon Carr said an Austin developer has "great plans for the property," but wouldn't expand on those plans.
What was the school portion of the building faces Tancahua; its interior currently is being gutted. It will be demolished down to the structure's frame.
The side that housed the church, facing Furman Ave., will be leveled. That work should begin in the next few weeks.
Second Baptist Church left the site in 1986, moving to its new home on the south side of Corpus Christi. The building then briefly served as the home of Annapolis Christian Academy in the 1990s, but before and since then, the site mostly has served as a series of homeless encampments.
One church pastor had plans to convert it into a homeless shelter in early 2002, and it was later supposed to be converted into an apartment complex in 2016.
