Mike Wilson was in his office. He took a scrapbook off a shelf and peeled back the plastic sheet cover. He picked up a single photo. It might as well have been his entire family history.

“That is Wilson Electric Company. Top to bottom, every bit of it. Back about 1930,” he said.

The photo showed a small desk, a step ladder used as a stool, some tools, a hat hanging from a rack. It looked like a workshop you might have in a corner of your basement. Which was exactly what it was in 1930 when Mike Wilson’s grandfather started the business.

“He dug out the basement of my great grandmother’s boarding house and made him a little place to work.” Wilson said.

The work was rewinding electric motors, a skill Mike Wilson’s grandfather probably picked up at the job he had been cut loose from in a lumber operation at the edge of town. Electric motors have not changed much and they are everywhere. The work is the mainstay of Wilson Electric Company to this day and it has fed three more generations of Wilsons.

A photo of the original Wilson Electric Company, circa 1930.

Mike Wilson’s father, Roger, grew up in the way of the family business.

“We started from scratch. I mean really, you can’t start any lower than we started,” Roger Wilson said.

Roger Wilson remembers when his mother would spend the scant midday hours between her split shifts at the telephone company right alongside his father. Slowly but surely the business moved out of the basement and out to it’s present home on Pine Street in Macon, Ga.

College happened with the help of a football scholarship. Later he was drafted into the NFL. But in the days before mega bucks for athletes, the pay wasn’t so great.

“I figured ‘to hell with that, I could make that fixing motors’,” Roger said.

“I had always worked in the shop from the time I was 6 or 7 years old until the time I left for college,” Roger Wilson said.

Electric motors big and small are the bread and butter of the Wilson Electric Company.

Roger Wilson has been running the family business since about 1955. In the early 1960s, he started an adjunct company, Wilson Electric Supply. That company sells the stuff electricians need to do their jobs. Though it and the parent company are still successful, they are threatened by a larger scheme of economic development.

Wilson Electric Versus The Renovation Of Second Street

The Renovation of Second Street in downtown Macon is that scheme. The street runs two miles from Mercer University on one end to the relatively hard scrabble east side of Macon on the other. In the middle are government buildings, hospitals and scattered businesses. The idea is to make a walkable, bike friendly corridor connecting it all in which new businesses and apartments will fill in the gaps.

The block Wilson Electric is on is right in the middle of what Macon Mayor Robert Reichert says is, for now, an ocean of asphalt.

Macon Mayor Robert Reichert with the master map of the Second Street renovation project. The project seeks to connect Mercer University and East Macon far across the Ocmulgee River via one walkable, bike friendly corridor. The Mayor and others hope businesses will follow.

“We needed to break up an ocean of asphalt with an island of green,” Reichert said.

To that end, a park, Mid City Square is planned.

Eminent Domain Abuse?

County workers are demolishing structures on three of the corners of the square. But not on the fourth. Half of Wilson Electric Supply Company would be demolished for that. Mike Wilson says his family put up roadblocks last December when they received a letter from the local land bank.

County workers tear up one of the lots near Wilson Electric Supply Company that was sold to Macon-Bibb County for the Mid City Square project.

“And right off the bat were threatening eminent domain. That we want your property and we will use eminent domain to get it,” Mike Wilson said.

The letter didn’t go over well with Mike Wilson’s mother.

She’s about eighty five years old, so it kind of upset her,” Mike Wilson said, “Immensely.”

Or his father.

“I just told ‘em hell no, I ain’t going to let you have my property. I worked too hard to get it,” Roger Wilson said.

The second letter with an offer to buy the place didn’t go over any better. Mike Wilson says the dollar amount wasn’t even close to what it would cost for the business to recover. That would take what he calls “Lottery Money”.

Demolition on another corner of the Mid City Square project is reflected in the front door of Wilson Electric Supply Company.

So now there’s a stalemate.

“As someone pointed out long ago, it’s hard to have a mid-city square with only three corners,” Mayor Reichert said.

For Reichert, the Second Street project is crucial to Macon-Bibb’s survival. He’s not backing down.

“So this is not just some penny ante...why not here, move down a block, you know?” Reichert said.

So no one is selling. When should eminent domain be used? Reichert, a lawyer, says it is pretty clear cut.

“When you’re building a road for example and you’ve got one land owner right in the middle who just says no,” Reichert said.

That doesn’t sit well with Mike Wilson.

“They’re not putting a highway in or building an airport,” Mike Wilson said.

Mike Wilson, center, and his brother Lee in the front of Wilson Electric Supply Company in Macon. Much of that half of the family business would be demolished for a park at the center of the renovation of Second Street in Macon.

In his eyes what the county is building is a little green space with hope for more businesses to come. He asks why disrupt an already successful business for that?

For eminent domain to come into play, the Mayor will have to convince the Macon-Bibb County Commission it’s warranted. That hasn’t happened yet.

The family would get more than the sale price of their property if they take a deal.

According to Alison Goldey, head of the Middle Georgia Land Bank, by law, a yet to be determined amount of cash will go to the resettling of the family business.

“We would have to make him whole. Macon-Bibb County would have to make him whole,” Goldey said.

But until there’s a deal or someone blinks, mid city square will remain a square with three corners.

Tags: Grant Blankenship, south, Southern, urban, renewal, gentrification, economy, eminent domain