Martin Marietta Materials has paid $600,000 for about 16 acres of land located across E. Garner Road from the company's Garner quarry.

Paxton Badham, who handles property negotiations for Martin Marietta, said the company plans to use the land simply as a buffer area for the quarry with the chance that it my eventually be home to a storage building or some offices.

Badham said the property hadn't been taken care of.

"The appearance of it was not good and it was often identified with the quarry we're looking forward to getting it cleaned up and down the road if we wanted to put an office or some building over there that would be a possibility," he said.

Raleigh-based Martin Marietta produces rock, gravel and other construction materials. The company owns nearly 300 quarries in 28 states.

Martin Marietta Materials reported Tuesday that sales and profit declined in the fourth quarter as demand for the company's construction materials continued to be hurt by the recession, which has reduced state budgets for road work and curtailed overall construction activity.

The Raleigh company, which produces rock, gravel and other materials, had revenues for the three months that ended Dec. 31 of $374.7 million, down 20 percent from the same quarter in the prior year.

For the year, Martin Marietta revenues dropped 19.5 percent from 2008.

The company reported a loss per diluted share of 7 cents for the quarter, compared with earnings per diluted share of 60 cents for the same quarter in the prior year.

"The infrastructure construction market, which represented 55 percent of 2009 shipments, was weakened as state budgets were negatively impacted by the prolonged recession and further exacerbated by the expiration of the federal highway bill in September 2009," said Ward Nye, Martin Marietta's president and CEO.

Fewer people died on the job last year, according to data released today by the N.C. Department of Labor.

It may be tempting to say the numbers — 34 deaths in 2009 compared to 57 in 2008 — reflect the recession. After all, fewer people are working, especially in industries that are typically the most hazardous: manufacturing and construction.

But Allen McNeely, director of the Department of Labor's Occupational Safety and Health Division, said that's not the case.

“To get a true gauge of how employers are doing, we look at the rate that fatalities are occurring, which takes into consideration the fluctuations in the workforce," McNeely said in a statement. "While we may have had fewer working, the work being performed is still extremely hazardous. We are encouraged by the fact that the fatality rate is decreasing.”

The fatality rate for construction per 100,000 workers over the past four years has decreased from 9.00 in 2006 to 6.98 in 2009, according to Labor's data. Last year, 14 people died in construction-related accidents compared to 17 in 2008. Meanwhile, eight workers died in manufacturing accidents compared to nine the previous year.

One of the Triangle's oldest family-owned businesses is now under new ownership.

The C.C. Mangum Co. was bought Friday by former state senator Fred J. Smith Jr., who has been CEO of the construction company since buying a stake in it in 2004. Financial details of the acquisition were not released.

In a statement announcing the acquisition, chairman Michael Mangum said that it had become apparent that a change was needed.

"Our goal was to do whatever it took to make the business stronger and protect the jobs of our workers," he said. "After examining the various options on the table we decided to sell to the Smiths."

The Raleigh-Cary area lost 25 percent of its construction jobs between October 2008 and 2009, according to a new analysis of metropolitan area employment data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics released by the Associated General Contractors of America.
The job losses, which totaled 9,500 in Raleigh and Cary, were the second most of any region in the state behind Charlotte-Gastonia-Concord, which declined 23 percent and lost 12,300 jobs.
The Durham-Chapel Hill area lost 1,200 construction jobs over the same period, or 12 percent of the total number of jobs it had in October 2008.
Construction employment nationally dropped by 1.1 million jobs over the period, according to the AGCA's analysis, with 328 metro areas reporting losses.
The 25 percent decline experienced in Raleigh-Cary was among the highest percentages recorded in any region across the country. The worst hit area from a percentage standpoint was Reno-Sparks, Nev., which saw construction jobs drop by 32 percent, or 5,100 jobs.  The Chicago-Naperville-Joliet region in Illinois recorded the largest number of total jobs lost at 24,000.

Martin Marietta Materials reported
this morning that sales and profit continued to fall during the third
quarter as the slump in construction activity weakens demand for its
products.

The Raleigh company produces rocks, gravel and other construction materials out of nearly 300 quarries in 28 states.

Net
sales for the three months that ended Sept. 30 were $428.6 million,
down 18 percent from the same quarter last year. Earnings per diluted
share were $1.23, down 34 cents from last year.

Martin Marietta again lowered its guidance for the year from $2.70 to $3.30 per share to $2.20 to $2.45 per share.

The company's stock fell 98 cents to $81.27 this morning and is down 20 percent from its recent high on Sept. 17.

Durham-based Mainline Contracting has ceased operations and converted its Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing to a Chapter 7 filing.

The change, announced at a bankruptcy court hearing on Oct. 15, means the company’s assets will be sold to pay off creditors.

The move concludes a rapid fall for Mainline, which ranked 1,156 on Inc. Magazine's 2009 list of the nation's 5,000 fastest-growing companies.

The magazine listed the company as having 385 employees and revenue of $73.6 million. Attempts to reach the company’s president, Randy Garrett, were unsuccessful this morning.

Duke University Health System plans to expand its medical empire.

Duke announced this morning it is building a new Cancer Center and Duke Medicine Paviliion at its main Durham campus. The two facilities will cost more than $700 million and add about 850,000 square feet to the campus.

The seven-story Cancer Center will be next to the current Morris Cancer Clinic and is expected to open in 2012. The eight-story pavilion is expected to be ready in 2013.

Medical expansions continue to fuel the local economy during the recession, with new projects proposed or underway in Chapel Hill, Raleigh, Clayton, Hillsborough and elsewhere.

The latest Duke project will create about 1,500 jobs during construction and 1,000 jobs when finished, university officials estimate.

Duke has recently finished renovations at Duke Raleigh and Durham
Regional hospitals, and opened clinics in Brier Creek, Morrisville,
Knightdale and North Raleigh.

Shares of Martin Marietta Materials fell in morning trading after the Raleigh-based producer of crushed rocks and other construction materials warned that  would weaken its 2009 earnings.

The company now predicts earnings of $2.70 to $3.30 a share. That’s down from the $3.70 to $4.15 it estimated in early May.

Martin Marietta has been cutting costs, including hundreds of jobs, to offset a slump in demand for its products.

“We continue to adjust our operating plan in response to the current economic environment with a strict focus on cost containment,” CEO Stephen Zelnak Jr. said in a prepared statement.

The company does expect to get a boost from federal stimulus money aimed at improving roads, bridges and other infrastructure. But the pace of those projects is moving slower than expected, Zelnak said.

He added that projects funded by stimulus money should start to pick up in the second half of the year and into 2010.

Martin Marietta’s stock, which has fallen nearly 20 percent in the past year, dropped $2.29 to $74.81 this morning.

See construction photos and renderings of the new expansion at the N.C. Museum of Art.