PlanSmart NJ honors Sheridan, others at annual awards dinner

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Fred Dohn stepped up to the podium, and he immediately raised a glass.
Not to make a toast, but to offer a simple overview of what his company, ARC International North America, does each day at its factory in Cumberland County.Not to make a toast, but to offer a simple overview of what his company, ARC International North America, does each day at its factory in Cumberland County.

“All of the glasses that you drank out of tonight were made in Millville, New Jersey,” said Dohn, the company’s CEO for the Americas. “We serve the hotel and restaurant business, we serve the retail business and we serve a lot of B2B businesses.

“Every beer you see advertised on TV … we make and decorate the glass in Millville, New Jersey.”

The list goes on for the world’s largest manufacturer of tabletop glassware, which has been in South Jersey for some 40 years and employs 1,000 people in the region. And it’s ARC International’s growing commitment to “clean manufacturing” and sustainability that earned it this year’s Resource Efficiency Achievement Award from PlanSmart NJ — the Trenton-based land-use planning organization.

The award was one of five presented Thursday night by the advocacy group as PlanSmart hosted its 46^th annual dinner. The event was held at the Heldrich Hotel and Conference Center in New Brunswick, with dozens of Garden State business leaders in attendance.

This year’s honorees also included:

The late John P. Sheridan Jr., who received the Regional and Community Planning Award for his work as Cooper Health System’s president and CEO. PlanSmart NJ selected Sheridan to receive the award prior to his death in late September, recognizing his help in implementing a vision to revitalize Cooper University Hospital’s campus and the surrounding sections of Camden.

“John’s many achievements span all throughout government, politics and later included his redevelopment work at Cooper Hospital in the city of Camden,” said James Lott Jr., Sheridan’s longtime partner at Riker Danzig, accepting the award on his behalf. “And I know that on many occasions, John told me that he thought that was his most important work out of all the work he had done.” 

Chuck Richman, deputy commissioner of the New Jersey Department of Community Affairs, who receivedthe Outstanding Individual Leadership Award for his 39 years of service in state government. He said the department was created in response to a “crisis resulting in the inability of hard-pressed communities to cope with the paradox of simultaneous growth and decay.”

“Fifty years later, we still suffer from that malady,” said Richman, who has spent three decades with the DCA. “But those of us who have spent our time in government have chosen a path and a career to try and do some things to ameliorate those ills.”

Choose New Jersey Inc. and thepublic-private New Jersey Partnership for Action, accepting the Economic Development Achievement Award for their efforts to encourage growth in New Jersey. The privately funded Choose New Jersey has helped gain commitments from 296 companies in four years — a job that CEO and President Tracye McDaniel said takes knowledge, influence, connections and patience.

“But what’s more important — it takes a little bit of great New Jersey attitude,” she said. “And I think we have that here, and we’re definitely showing that at every opportunity we can to talk about the value proposition that this state has when it comes to attracting companies.

The New Jersey Conservation Foundation and Michele Byers, executive director, who received the Environmental Achievement Award for the foundation’s more than 50 years of land preservation efforts in the state. Byers, whose career spans 32 years, said, “I know a lot of people are cynical about it, but I really do believe you can have strong economic development and a strong environment.”

She added that the future of New Jersey rests with a strong state plan that has “real incentives to develop in the right places and … incentives to protect the other places.”

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