New York City
Demolition Contractor in New York City
One demolition contractor for the whole city. We strip out offices, apartments, shops, houses and loft space in all five boroughs, and we plan every job around the building it is happening inside.
- Based at4 Centre Market Pl, Nolita
- WorkingAll five boroughs
- Call(929) 693-6783
The building decides how the job runs
Not the other way round.
Taking things apart is the straightforward half of this trade. In New York the difficulty is everything wrapped around it.
There is a route out, and it is different in every building in the city. There are hours, set by the city and then set again, more tightly, by whoever owns the place. There are people two floors up who did not ask for any of this. And on most addresses there is at least one approval sitting in front of a start date that nobody has ordered yet.
We settle all of that before we plan a single day of demolition. We walk the space, work out how material gets from where it is to the street, and build the sequence backwards from there. That is what stops a job stalling on day three, and it is the reason we ask for the alteration agreement and the freight allocation before we send a number rather than after.
What we take on
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01
Interior
Interior Demolition
Full and partial gut-outs, taken to bare structure or to a clean shell with the services left live and marked.
Interior demolition
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02
Commercial
Commercial Demolition
Offices, shops, restaurants and showrooms cleared between tenancies, worked back from your fit-out date and around the tenants who are staying.
Commercial demolition
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03
Residential
Residential Demolition
Apartments, brownstones, row houses and two-family homes, run to the building's alteration agreement, its approved hours and its rules about corridors and lifts.
Residential demolition
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04
Concrete
Concrete Cutting and Removal
Slab openings, shaft and stair penetrations, trenching, and old pads and curbs broken out. Cut to a line and sized to whatever has to carry it away.
Concrete cutting and removal
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05
Debris
Debris Removal and Disposal
Everything our demolition generates, bagged, staged and out of the building on the schedule the building gives us, carted away by a registered carter.
Debris removal and disposal
New York rooftops
Before anything comes down
Two things decide when a job in this city can actually begin, and neither of them is the demolition.
The asbestos assessment. Where the building went up before 1 April 1987 and the work needs a Department of Buildings permit, an assessment has to be on file before that permit issues. Most of the city's stock, in every borough, predates that date, so this is the ordinary case and not the awkward one. It is the owner's filing, it takes as long as it takes, and ordering it late is the single most common reason a start date moves.
The building's own rules. A co-op or condo board approves on its own timetable and often meets monthly. It then sets your working hours, your lift access and your protection standard, and those three facts govern the programme more than the scope does.
We will tell you on the first call which of these your job triggers, before you have spent anything. The whole sequence is set out here, city-wide.
How a job runs
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Step 1 of 5
We walk the space
Ideally with you in it. We look at what is coming out, what is staying, what the walls and floors are actually made of, and where the material is going to go once it is loose.
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Step 2 of 5
You get a scope and a number
Itemised, tied to a sequence, and written against the access the building actually gives us rather than against a square footage. Anything that could move once the walls are open is flagged then, not later.
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Step 3 of 5
We protect, then we start
The lobby, the corridor, the lift cab, the stair, the stoop and everything staying in the space. On an occupied floor that is most of the first day, and it is what decides whether the building wants us back.
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Step 4 of 5
We clear as we go
Material is broken down, bagged and staged as it is produced, and it leaves in the windows the building allows. Nothing waits in your space for the end of the job.
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Step 5 of 5
You get the space back clean
Swept, clear, services capped and tagged, and ready for whoever is in next. You also get a plain account of what was behind the walls, because your next trade will want it.
Five boroughs, one contractor
We are based on Centre Market Place in Nolita and we work across the Bronx, Brooklyn, Manhattan, Queens and Staten Island.
The city is not one job. A Garment District loft has a freight elevator and a floor plate you can move around. A Park Slope brownstone has a stoop and a stair, and every load leaves on someone's shoulder. A Jamaica two-family has a driveway and a container permit. A Grand Concourse apartment has one passenger elevator shared with a hundred households.
Common questions
What drives the cost of a demolition job in New York City?
Less of it than people expect comes from the demolition. Four things move the number.
- How material gets out. This is usually the largest single factor. A lift you can book, a stair you cannot, a driveway you can back a container into, and a shared freight car released for four hours a day are four different prices for one scope.
- What you are taking out. Plaster on masonry is slower than drywall on studs. Concrete is slower again. Tile on a mortar bed and old flooring adhesive both add hours nobody budgets for.
- When you are allowed to work. A job that fits the standard weekday window costs less than one needing evenings or weekends, because after-hours work needs a variance and a crew outside normal hours.
- What has to be protected. An empty floor needs very little. An occupied building with a shared lobby and a corridor in constant use needs a great deal, and it is not optional.
We price against the actual space rather than a rate per square foot, because in this city the square footage is rarely the thing that decides it.
How soon can you start?
Usually sooner than the paperwork does, which is the honest answer and not the flattering one.
If the job needs a Department of Buildings permit, the asbestos assessment is filed first and the permit follows it. If the building is a co-op or a condo, the board and the managing agent have their own approval to give, and that can take longer than the city's. If the address is in a historic district there is a Landmarks certificate ahead of the permit as well.
Call early and we will tell you which of those apply to you. On work that triggers none of them we can move quickly.
Do you work in buildings that are still occupied?
Yes, and in this city that is the normal case rather than the exception.
It changes how the job is run. It does not change whether it can happen. Protection goes further, dust separation is real rather than decorative, noisy work is grouped into agreed windows, and debris moves when the building lets it move instead of when it suits us. All of it is agreed with the managing agent or the owner before the first day.
Do you cover my borough?
Yes. We work across the Bronx, Brooklyn, Manhattan, Queens and Staten Island.
If you would rather not choose, call the number on this page and describe the space. We will tell you what it involves and arrange to come and look at it, whichever borough it is in.