b'VOICES OF DEMOCRACYJust a dozen of hundreds of Corpus Christi citizens who spoke at CityDevelopmentCouncil, in workshops, and at dozens of meetings, all in support of a Grand Canal on North Beach. Thousands more signed petitions.Opposite: Developer Jeff Blackard confronts Mayor Joe McComb.} Dilutes Power. W ise words from a wise woman. When commercial real estate agent Marilyn Jordan wel-comed Jeff Blackard to Corpus Christi for the first time, the conversation was about rede-veloping one or more of the citys abandoned golf courses into a village community like Adriatica in McKinney, just north of Dallas. Blackard was introduced to the Pharaoh Valley Neighborhood Association, by far the feistiest and most vocal homeowners group in the city, and joined the effort to rescue their abandoned golf course from another decade of haz-ardous overgrowth and decay, along with the depressed property value that came with it.Blackards concept for a $300 million, Italian-themed, mixed-use village community to be known as Barisi Village, was inspired by Portofino, Italy, and was modeled after his successful project in McKinney. The driving concept behind just about every development Jeff Blackard takes on these days is the idea that modern civilization, specifically in the United States, has lost its con-nectivity by self-segregating based on income and social statusand that the solution is to return to our village roots like what you still find in Europe. After almost twenty years developing high-end subdivisions and expensive retail and commercial property, Black-ard took an abrupt shift following the tragic loss of a close business associate in 1999. Before Tiger Woods, the number one professional golfer in the world was Payne Stewart, a Missouri native who played college golf at Southern Method-ist University in Dallas. On October 25, 1999, just months after winning the U.S. Open, Stewart was aboard a private jet on his way to a work session in Dallas with Blackard, when it lost cabin pressure, asphyxiating the pilots and everyone onboard, and crashing in South Dakota hours later after running out of fuel.The sudden loss of an associate he admired, in the prime of his life, had a profound impact on Blackard, who changed the course of his development career in pursuit of projects that would have a positive and lasting social impact on the communities in which they are built. It was around this time that he acquired a resort hotel located in Supetar, an TheCoastalBend.com THE COASTAL BEND MAGAZINEQ2.2020 43'