Steve Knox, vice prez of The Knox Group, sheds light on outage’s impact

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When the lights went out in northern Mecklenburg County for nearly 24 hours starting early Monday, business owners and residents felt the inconvenience.

That included The Knox Group, a family-operated real estate company in Huntersville.

Although the outage caused by the explosion of a transformer in Cornelius didn’t cause Knox’s office to lose power, it affected the company in other ways.

Vice President Steve Knox said it caused some of his clients — the company manages about half a million square feet of retail, industrial and office property in Huntersville, Cornelius and Mooresville — to be without electricity as far south as Bailey Road by Highway 115. The company manages North 77 Business Park, which is in that area.

The company also manages Oak Street Mill. The retail center behind the Cornelius Police Department lost power, too. Knox said he was supposed to have business meetings that day, but he found notices on doors that said the businesses were closed because of the outage.

“It was an interesting day,” he said. “Everything in downtown Cornelius kind of shut down by midday.”

The outage occurred about 1:30 a.m. Monday.

Power was not restored until about 9 p.m.