Construction firm honored for citizenship

Martin Horn Inc., a longtime local general contracting company, on Thursday received the Charlottesville Regional Chamber of Commerce’s highest award for corporate citizenship.

The chamber presented its 2009 Hovey S. Dabney Award to Martin Horn at its annual business luncheon at the Holiday Inn-University Area.

“This community has benefited greatly from their work,” said Christopher Lee, the immediate past chairman of the chamber.

Martin Horn is known for its construction work on Albemarle County’s new office building on Fifth Street, the University of Virginia’s Davenport Field baseball stadium and the Charlottesville Pavilion. It is also known for its renovations of Charlottesville High School, Charlottesville-Albemarle Airport and many other iconic institutions of the Charlottesville region.

“We’re very much a local construction company,” said John D. Horn, the company’s president.

Over the past two fiscal years, Horn said, the firm has undertaken $100 million worth of projects in Charlottesville and Albemarle County.

The award’s namesake, Hovey S. Dabney, was a prominent Charlottesville banker and former rector of UVa. He died in 2007.

At the same time, Martin Horn has long supported local nonprofit organizations, including the Charlottesville-Albemarle Rescue Squad, Live Arts, Piedmont YMCA, Monticello, the United Way-Thomas Jefferson Area and many others.

In addition to the presentation of its Hovey S. Dabney Award, the chamber’s luncheon also featured U.S. Rep. Tom Perriello, D-Ivy.

Perriello, who has been barnstorming across the 5th Congressional District to discuss the recently approved economic stimulus package, told the crowd of business leaders that the $787 billion measure includes numerous items that will boost the Charlottesville region’s struggling economy.

“Before we start to heal, we need to stop the bleeding,” Perriello said. “We hope what this contains will be enough to do that.”

Perriello, who acknowledged that the stimulus package was “not perfect,” said it should help the economy through infrastructure spending, clean energy initiatives, and its long list of tax credits and rebates for middle-class families and businesses.

According to White House estimates released this week, the package will create or save 7,800 jobs in the 5th District, which includes Charlottesville and the counties of Albemarle, Buckingham, Greene, Fluvanna and Nelson.

Roughly 40 percent of the bill, he said, focuses on tax cuts. Largest among these is a two-year fix of the alternative minimum tax that will benefit an estimated 814,000 Virginia families.

Infrastructure projects, he added, make up another large component of the package. For Virginia, Gov. Timothy M. Kaine will distribute the stimulus money to “shovel ready” projects. Perriello is advocating for a list of transportation, rural broadband and water and sewer projects in the Charlottesville area, as well as the rest of his district.

Chamber President and CEO Timothy Hulbert took the opportunity to lobby Perriello to support an upgrade of a sewer line that serves much of Charlottesville and everything south of Rio Road’s intersection with U.S. 29.

“I’ve got two words for you: Meadowcreek interceptor,” Hulbert said. “Not the Meadowcreek Parkway. The Meadowcreek interceptor. It is the No. 1 priority for getting our water and sewer straightened out.”

Perriello said recent layoffs and furloughs at Charlottesville-area companies drive home the painful economic recession. “Even the areas that had been prosperous through the tough times are now feeling the pain,” he said.

The economic stimulus package, he said, will not be a silver bullet to improve the economy, but will place the country in the best possible position to emerge from the downturn.