38 THE COASTAL BEND MAGAZINE • March/April 2018 TheCoastalBend.com impacted by a new canal being dredged, and then op- erated, at the entrance to the port. This is not to say that it could not work, and that such an arrangement does not work at other ports around the country, but SEAtown would very much need to be a project of the Port of Corpus Christi—and this may not be a bad thing. It’s very possible that only the Port could pull it off, in terms of logistics, working with the Army Corps of Engineers and the Coast Guard, and above all, getting the money. At this point, SEAtown is a request for funding to study the idea and its feasibility, presented by Perkes Works to the City of Corpus Christi, Nueces County and the Regional Transportation Authority, from which a total of $100,000 is being asked. Without intimate knowledge of how these things work, it seems odd to request public funding to study a development idea by a private group for a public zone. It is intuitive to ex- pect public officials to seek out interested developers with a request for proposal for the property in ques- tion, and not for the offer to come before the request, as is the case here. Nonetheless, SEAtown sounds like a proven-suc- cessful concept that fits in perfectly with the city’s identity, while fulfilling the very best use of the land vacated by the old bridge—and one that would have to give new life to the 1914 Nueces County Courthouse, tax credit or not. Pulling it off, however, is an entirely different question. O ne development partner- ship that has exhibited both the desire and the working capacity to bring an equally ambitious, equally historic, redevelopment vision to real- ity on the bay front, is that of Dallas-based Blackard Global and North Beach investor Lyn Frazier. Blackard has been embroiled in a political and legal battle to proceed with the purchase of the closed and overgrown Pharaoh Valley Country Club (see Ba- risi Village, January-February 2018), to clear the way for a $300 million, Italian village-themed community of homes, hotels and businesses. Frazier is an accom- plished inventor and entrepreneur in the oil field tool industry, and has invested millions on North Beach, including the construction of Fajitaville and Hotel De Ville. While neither man is native to the Coastal Bend, they have both proven their seriousness and enthusi- asm about the area’s future, measured in the one test that really matters—they have put their money where their mouths are. In the years shortly after Fajitaville opened, Fra- zier could be seen in his golf cart, greeting tourists to the beach near the aquarium and Lexington, passing out flyers and coupons for his restaurant. A man who is a titan in a multi-billion-dollar industry, the one that gave him the freedom to live, and invest in the com-