Brooklyn, NY
Where We Work in Brooklyn
We are based on Fenimore Street in Prospect Lefferts Gardens and we take demolition work across the borough. Brooklyn is not one job, so here is what actually changes from one part of it to another.
What changes is the building, not the address
A demolition estimate is really an estimate about access, material and hours. All three are set by the kind of building you are in, and Brooklyn's building stock changes sharply from one neighborhood to the next.
A brownstone with a stoop and a turning stair, a Downtown office floor with a shared freight elevator, and a two-family house with a driveway are three different jobs even when the scope on paper is identical. That is the difference worth knowing about, so that is what the sections below describe.
01 Our own blocks
Prospect Lefferts Gardens, Flatbush and Crown Heights
Limestone and brick row houses, freestanding Victorians on the Lefferts Manor blocks, and six-storey pre-war apartment buildings along the avenues, most with one passenger elevator and no freight.
In the row houses everything leaves by the stoop. In the apartment buildings material moves through a protected passenger cab in the windows the super releases, or down the stair. Prospect Lefferts Gardens and Crown Heights North are historic districts, so a permitted interior job files with Landmarks first.
Our own premises are at 107 Fenimore St, Brooklyn, NY 11225, in the middle of it.
02 The brownstone belt
Park Slope, Prospect Heights, Fort Greene, Clinton Hill and Brooklyn Heights
Three- and four-storey brownstones, attached, with a stoop to the parlor floor and a garden level below. Plaster on brick and on wood lath, original woodwork, mantels and stairs that owners want kept.
Nearly all of it sits in a historic district, so the Landmarks certificate sits ahead of the permit on any job that needs one. For a strip-out that leaves the protected features alone that is a Certificate of No Effect, staff level and usually about ten business days. The container goes at the curb, which the block notices, so its placement and its duration are settled before it arrives.
03 Offices and lofts
Downtown Brooklyn and DUMBO
Office towers and converted loft buildings with shared freight elevators released in blocks, loading docks off narrow streets, and fit-out schedules that look like Manhattan's.
The freight allocation decides the pace of a strip-out here more than the scope does, so we establish it with the managing agent before we price. DUMBO is a historic district too, and much of Downtown's older stock is designated.
04 Conversions and towers
Williamsburg, Greenpoint and Bushwick
Converted brick warehouses with heavy timber or concrete frames and street-level loading, beside new towers with alteration agreements and service elevators booked through management. Often on the same block.
The conversions are generous to work in and hard to get a container next to. The towers are the reverse. Knowing which you have changes the crew and the schedule on day one.
05 Houses with driveways
Bay Ridge, Bensonhurst, Sheepshead Bay and Canarsie
Attached and semi-detached brick houses with short driveways and small yards, and pre-war apartment buildings along the main avenues.
The route out is the simplest in the borough. A container can often sit in the driveway rather than on the street, which removes the permit and the argument, and the schedule usually reflects it. The apartment buildings here run like the ones in Flatbush: one passenger car, agreed windows, protected cab.
A Brooklyn brownstone block
We work across Brooklyn. Red Hook, Sunset Park and the other industrial stretches are covered on the commercial page, because the work there is warehouse strip-out. If you are just outside the borough, our other sites cover the rest of the city, and the number on this page reaches the same people.