One nearby company has been a fixture of the Chantilly, and Northern Virginia, area for decades. If you have lived here for any length of time you have probably seen one its red trucks with emblazened yellow letters out and about. Over the years, the company’s major construction projects included the Dulles Town Center and Burke Centre shopping malls, the Ashburn Farm housing development, corporate buildings, hospitals, schools and more than 1,000 miles of roads and highways.
About the founder (from his Washington Post obituary):
William Andrew Hazel was born March 26, 1935, in Boston, where his father, a surgeon, was a medical intern. He grew up in Arlington County and graduated from Washington-Lee High School. He served in the Army during the 1950s and worked on a family farm in McLean before entering the construction business. In 1957, his family bought land in the Fauquier County community of Broad Run, where Mr. Hazel and other members of his family settled and raised cattle. The rapid growth of Northern Virginia in the 1960s and later made Mr. Hazel a wealthy man, but he maintained a much lower public profile than his politically well-connected brother. In addition to his business acumen, Mr. Hazel became known for his philanthropy, particularly to educational groups, to which he contributed millions of dollars. He was instrumental in the founding of Lord Fairfax Community College in 1970 and donated $1 million in the form of land to George Mason University in 1988. In his 1991 book “Edge City,” former Washington Post reporter Joel Garreau wrote that Mr. Hazel built an “earthmoving empire of twelve hundred employees” and “owned more heavy equipment than many African nations.” Mr. Hazel also helped found the Virginia Literacy Foundation and was a member of the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority from 1998 to 2007. He served on the boards of Virginia Military Institute, several private schools and Youth for Tomorrow, an organization founded by former Washington Redskins coach Joe Gibbs to benefit at-risk youths. Mr. Hazel retired as chief executive in 2008 but continued as chairman of the board of his privately owned company until his death.