Buildings That Make Our Community Stronger
Giving back to the community is one of Martin Horn's core values. “We believe we have a responsibility to help others”.
That belief shows up in the time and treasure we give directly. It also shows up in the kind of owner we end up building for. Much of our work supports nonprofits and charitable organizations, and we see that work as another way to give back. Some serve their communities through faith, including two churches we are building for now. The need is the same either way, and so is our commitment to it. Nonprofits doing hard, important work need good advice long before they need a shovel in the ground, and when that shovel does hit the ground, they need a team dedicated to completing the project safely and without surprises. They pick us because our people bring value, not just to a schedule or a budget, but to the mission behind the walls.
That's not something you can put in a bid tab. It's the way our superintendents talk to a nervous executive director. It's the way our estimators find a way to make the numbers work for an organization that's counting every dollar. It's showing up as if the outcome matters as much to us as it does to them, because it does.
We get to take real pride in that. Not every contractor gets to say the buildings they put up are also making their community stronger. We do.
Here's what that looks like in practice.
Camp Holiday Trails: building the Med Korner, a new medical building so more kids with serious health conditions can just get to be kids at camp. At the ribbon cutting, Tina, our owner on the project, told us that if they ever need something, they just flash the Martin Horn banner in the sky and, like Batman, we come to save the day.
VIA Centers for Neurodevelopment: breaking ground on the Webb building, which will roughly double the school's capacity for people with autism and neurodevelopmental disabilities.
Region Ten: building emergency shelters, administrative offices, and clinic space across Central Virginia, and standing up the region's first COVID vaccine stations in the early days of the pandemic.
Vista 29: general contractor on 80 units of permanent supportive housing for people who've experienced chronic homelessness.
Charlottesville's low-barrier shelter: involved in the planning and pricing through multiple design iterations, some of it paid work and some of it not, because getting this one right for the city and the providers who'll run it mattered more than whether we got paid for every hour.
The Charlottesville Free Clinic: building out the pharmacy and fitting out the dental space in its new home so people without insurance can get the care and medicine they need at no cost, and generally being their go-to.
Community Dental Center: building for an organization that provides dental care to kids.
Building Goodness Foundation: built its headquarters at cost, so an organization that sends volunteers around the world to build clinics and schools finally had a building of its own.
First Baptist Park Street and Portico Church: currently under construction, because building for a congregation is a form of service too.
Meals on Wheels and the Blue Ridge Area Food Bank: provided pro bono pricing and estimating so these organizations could take real numbers to their boards and donors.
Martin Horn Helps: our own fund for our people in hard times, whose board also stewards the local Imagination Library, mailing free books to kids from birth to age five.
Pearlington, Haiti, and Guatemala: trips our own people have taken to help rebuild communities after disaster, alongside local days of caring with Building Goodness Foundation.
Different projects, same reason we're on them: we bring value, and it matters.
