The electrical contractor: Gil Myers

Last week we featured a small business, W.M Meekins Jr. & Associates, a surveying company with a longtime Outer Banks presence. In Phase 2 of our story, we highlight the “rough-in” stage of building, part of which involves the pre-wiring of our subject home as soon as the framing is complete.

That job was done by G.W. Myers Electrical Contractor, owned by “Gil” Myers. Like Meekins, Myers is not a newcomer to the Outer Banks real estate and construction dance. He first lived here in 1979, while still in the U.S. Army. Myers was injured when a vehicle ran over his leg, cutting it off below the knee. He wears a prosthetic device and was medically retired from the Army in 1981.

Not one to let obstacles get in the way of his life, he founded his electrical contracting business here in 1988. Myers does the same work as his crew — climbing ladders, pulling wire, moving about the decks and pilings. We met him working on a house in Barrier Island’s Duck project.

It would be safe to say the downturn in the local construction economy has thrown him a bigger curve than his military injuries. Prior to the building boom in the period from 1988 to around 1999, Myers wired about 75 houses per year. During the boom years from 2000 to 2006, it was not unusual for him to wire 125 or more new homes.

During the best five years of our building uptick, his company grossed between $600,000 and $900,000 annually. He kept four two-person crews humming, making nine full-time jobs plus part-time help in the summers.

Today, gross sales are $500,000 or less, and he is down to four employees — in essence two crews — making his company about half the size it was during the boom and much smaller than the pre-boom years. In 2009, for example, Myers only wired 12 homes.

Like many in the construction trades, Myers adapted and has added more commercial work. He has been fortunate to land jobs on new shopping centers and other large projects that have allowed the company to survive. Myers says right now, his definition of work is “anything we can find.”

Things have picked up a bit for him in 2010; through June he has landed a dozen house jobs — equaling the entire 2009 total, yet still far below even the pre-boom volume of the 80s and 90s.

Myers will be involved in our subject house one more time before the series is complete; when it comes time to install the interior and exterior lighting fixtures. However, in keeping with our counting method, his crew and their jobs will not be added a second time to our totals.