Six speakers took the stage at the Wilmington Convention Center for five different talks Thursday morning during the Greater Wilmington Business Journal Power Breakfast.

The final Power Breakfast event of the year, the event was a TED Talk-style format aimed at featuring “Wilmington’s Most Intriguing People of 2017.” The topics ranged from mitigating violence in the Wilmington community and the local opioid epidemic to helping those in need in the community, as well as further developing cultural and educational resources downtown.

New Hanover County Manager Chris Coudriet highlighted Project Grace in the first talk of the event. The project is a potential downtown development that includes a 3-acre block bound by Grace and Chestnut streets between Second and Third streets.

The property includes two old buildings, one of which is abandoned, and parking lots, Coudriet said.

In January, New Hanover County began to study redeveloping the block, he said. Coudriet discussed the opportunity the project provides to transform the downtown property, using a public and private partnership for development that could include new residential, commercial and retail space, as well as space for two of the area's cultural resources -- the Cape Fear Museum and the New Hanover County Public Library's main branch. 

The main branch is currently already located in the block. Moving the Cape Fear Museum to the same property as part of a redevelopment project could create "synergy" between the two public resources, he said.

“It is more cost effective to co-locate,” Coudriet said, proposing that both the library and museum could share space for content, archives and other resources.

"Project Grace creates the synergy. It gives us the opportunity to firmly establish downtown Wilmington as the cultural and educational nexus for our community, accommodate the kind of growth that's coming, and meet the needs of those populations," Coudriet said, "and all the while enhance and develop the long-term economic prosperity of Wilmington and New Hanover County."

The potential importance of public-private partnerships was echoed by Craig Heim, president and CEO of United Way of the Cape Fear Area, who shared his thoughts on a new way of engaging the community to support local charities.

“If you are going to do big, bold things, you need to think big thoughts,” Heim said.

Heim talked about United Way not only as an entity in the community but as a process of working together. He aims for the nonprofit to grow a community by solving community problems with collaboration among agencies and other partnerships.

Heim also called on local leadership and the community to work together to raise the next generation by meeting the needs of children through nourishment, education and spiritual development.

"To me it's just a community making a decision to be able to do this, to move resources -- still remediate problems, still try to fix broken things -- but begin walking up the path, so you can get there early on so that the problems don't even occur,” Heim said. "Kids ... they can make it. We can do this. I nominate Cape Fear."

Expanding on the needs of the community, Olivia Herndon's talk Thursday focused on the local opioid epidemic.

“Our region has been heavily impacted by the epidemic,” said Herndon, director of mental health and public health as well as the co-director for continuing education at South East Area Health Education Center.

In statistics she provided during her talk, Herndon said New Hanover County has seen a 900 percent increase in overdoses in the past 15 years. And New Hanover Regional Medical Center has seen a 250 percent increase in babies born addicted since 2014.

Herndon's focus was on three topics: the problem, its effect on the entire community and the need for the community to help, through medication safety, education and by becoming a solution to the problem.

“We are going to get this right. People from all over are wanting to get this right … and we are going to need your help to do it. And you can be a part of that,” she said.

Jennifer McCall, co-founder and CEO of SeaTox Research, talked about finding solutions to a different problem. This year, her firm, located at the University of North Carolina Wilmington's MARBIONC facility, received a $1.5 million grant to develop toxin tests for seafood. Through her research, she is also working on developing products and drug discovery through marine science and biotechnology.

McCall said scientists are looking for bacteria to develop new medications that can cure diseases.

"The World Health Organization calls this a global crisis," McCall said of the race to develop new antibiotics. "We are rapidly reaching the point where we will have infectious diseases we have not seen for 100 years that we have been able to treat, that are no longer able to be treated."

But in Wilmington, she said scientists are working on finding solutions and called for local support initiatives in the area to push product development and breakthroughs.

“Our students want to stay here. Our students want to start companies here, and we have the resources for it,” McCall said. “We need to make sure that we have the support systems in place to nurture students ... people coming out of the region, people in the community that want to start marine biotech-related business, so that we can see success for our region.”

The last talk of the event included speakers George Taylor and Steve Barnett, two regional entrepreneurs involved in TRU Colors Brewing Company, who discussed a unique new business model that could bring a different kind of success for the region.

The idea, Taylor said, came from taking a look at violence in the community – one particular event two years ago, when a 16-year-old boy was killed in a gang-related shooting at the corner of Castle and 11th streets.

TRU Colors Brewing seeks to create a for-profit brewery and restaurant run by active gang members, with a goal of creating a successful business, while stopping violent crime.

"Surprisingly everybody was actually all for it. Every hood that I went to, the North, the South, the East, they were all trying to figure out ways to get involved in this. We saw this as an opportunity for peace and we saw this as an opportunity for civility and a way for us to get money and not be on the corner looking over our shoulders anymore," said Barnett, who became a Blood gang member at the age of 17.

Barnett said the idea encouraged some consensus among active gang members in the community who have had the chance to get involved with TRU Colors Brewing.

Taylor said the idea has established a “buzz” within the local gang community about the business plan. He has since brought on several active gang members who are between the ages of 18 and 32 to be trained and ready for the opening of the brewery. 

“The guys I am working with … they are not broken people; they are headstrong, they are smart, they’re aggressive and energized,” Taylor said.

Now through the TruHero program, TRU Colors has received recognition from the local business community and has also pitched to the Wilmington Investor Network. Taylor said the angel investors group offered funding, but the project turned it down, adding that TRU Colors has not yet taken on outside investment.

"I've got about 30 to 40 gang members that I think are going to be excellent employees. But I don't have a position for them now. And so we started this thing called the apprentice program and anyone who wants to get into TruColors has to go through this for at least two months," Taylor said.

Taylor said he hopes to place them in jobs by January and early February.