ENR New York is pleased to announce the Owner of the Year for 2020: the New York City School Construction Authority.

According to Dodge Analytics, the SCA started 396 new projects in 2019, such as a $78M new school on Staten Island. All of the authority's 3,144 projects listed in Dodge's database are valued at almost $14.8 billion total.

Led by Lorraine Grillo — who hadn't yet been named president and CEO of the organization when it won ENR New York's 2009 Owner of the Year honor — the SCA broke ground on several new school projects in 2019, including the brand-new East New York Family Academy; an annex for the Benjamin N. Cardozo High School in Bayside; and the $68 million IS 419 in Flushing.

In September, 18 school sites opened, starting with the new, $62 million PS 398 in Queens, which serves prekindergarten through fifth grade students with 476 new seats.

Another notable school that opened in 2019 is PS 46X in the Bronx. The DeMatteis Organization, one of the project team members, earlier told ENR that the project comprised construction of a new five-story, 77,000-sq-ft building and renovation for an existing 81,700-sq-ft adjacent building. Joining them involved careful planning of structural tie-in work between both.

Finally, after completing its 2015-2019 capital plan worth about $15 billion, SCA's new $18 billion capital plan for fiscal years 2020-2024 is “the largest proposed school capital plan ever,” city officials say.

You can read more about the NYC School Construction Authority in the March 2020 edition of ENR New York.