Jobs boom, church sale headline busy week for local boards

The Middle Georgia Regional Commission got an update last week on a $100 million industrial expansion expected to bring hundreds of jobs to south Bibb County, while the Urban Development Authority voted to sell Macon’s oldest church building.

Growth could bring up to 500 new jobs

Unified Legacy, the parent company for Unified Defense, Truss US and Prince Service & Manufacturing is expanding its sheet metal fabrication operation to more than 30 acres at 2255 Barnes Ferry Road, which backs up to Prince’s current location at 6600 Hawkinsville Road.

The expected $100 million expansion could provide between 350-500 jobs and up to $600,000 of annual tax revenue, according to the company’s Development of Regional Impact, or DRI, filing.

“A big win for economic development that doesn’t always get captured [is] when we have our local businesses that are expanding and homegrown, so it’s good to celebrate them when we have them,” said Middle Georgia Regional Commission’s Director of Planning and Public Administration Greg Boike at the group’s May 14 meeting.  

Regional leaders learned commission staff completed the required DRI review for Prince’s planned 82-foot-tall, 610,000-square-foot building. The company hopes to complete it early next year. 

The Macon-Bibb County Planning and Zoning Commission approved the extraordinary building height on May 11.

P&Z staff concluded the approval “would allow the property to be developed in a manner that fully reflects its zoning and planned industrial purpose, while denial would limit the site’s productive use. The proposed building height is directly related to functional manufacturing needs and efficient internal operations, rather than an increase in intensity or impact.”

The plant is expected to use 12,500 gallons of water per day, which the Macon Water Authority stated it could handle, but a new sanitary sewer line is needed. 

An underground detention pond system is expected to handle stormwater and there should be “no harmful effects downstream,” according to the company’s P&Z application. 

The plant is expected to generate 2,690 to 2,853 vehicle trips per day from employees, trucks and shipments during peak hours, so the Georgia Department of Transportation asked for a traffic study during the DRI process. 

MGRC also reviewed a DRI report for the proposed Macon Arena project. The plan generated a Georgia Department of Transportation request for a “worst-case scenario” for traffic around events at the planned facility just off Interstate 16 and the Second Street Bridge. 

The panel also adopted the Ocmulgee National Park and Preserve Initiative’s Corridor Strategic Plan for preparing to host Georgia’s first national park and accommodate millions of tourists in the coming decades.

Boike explained that adopting the resolution also renews MGRC’s support for the national park and preserve designation. 

“It will task us, as the regional commission, to help our member local governments with the priorities that are around economic development, tourism, land use and such priorities that are laid out in that planning document,” Boike said.

Representatives of the 11 counties also learned the state expects local governments to commission their own geographic information system data, or GIS.

Georgia’s first geospatial information officer, Susan Miller, said the regional commission is the elected officials’ best partner in the data-mapping operation that will be critical to developing a next-generation 911 system that allows redundancy throughout the region if one county is experiencing a devastating emergency.

Miller said it will take six years to acquire all the data needed for Georgia to take advantage of the latest technology and replace systems originally developed 50 years ago. 

Old church has new congregation

At its May 14 meeting, the Macon-Bibb County Urban Development Authority agreed to sell Macon’s oldest church building, which will become home to a new congregation after it was spared from becoming part of a low-income housing proposal in 2020.

In 1829, the one-story, white wooden church was designed for First Presbyterian Church by architect Elam Alexander when he was working on the Bibb County Courthouse. Originally, it was built on Fourth Street, which is now Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd.

Once the Presbyterian congregation outgrew the church in 1837, Alexander, who was married there, purchased it and sold it to the Roman Catholic Diocese of Savannah in 1841. 

After 25 years, the Catholic Church bought First Presbyterian’s newer brick church on Broadway between Mulberry and Walnut streets as that congregation moved to its current home on Mulberry Street. 

Pope Piux IX decreed the Catholic congregation could sell the old wooden building if it was dismantled to prevent it from being “converted into sordid use.” Piece by piece, the church was taken apart and moved to 506 Hawthorne St. to be the home of the Second Baptist congregation between 1868 and 1887. Most recently, Fulton Baptist Church worshiped there.

Bibb County bought the building for $150,000 from Fulton Baptist in 2013 and turned it over to the UDA. The county already owned the adjoining Virgil Powers Elementary School that it bought in 2009 as it was eyeing a location for a new courthouse or jail expansion. That school building is being renovated as the new home of the “One Safe Place” Family Justice Center.

UDA Executive Director Alex Morrison also updated the board on pending renovations for the Muscogee (Creek) Nation Cultural Center in the historic 1870s DeWitt McCrary house on Hydrolia Street. Muscogee artist Starr Hardridge is working on a clay sculpture designed for the center that will be installed in Bicentennial Park in the interim, Morrison said.

“Because they’re going to be done with their sculpture well before the cultural center, they wouldn’t have a place to put it,” Morrison said.