ENR New York has named Urban Foundation/Engineering LLC as its 2024 Specialty Contractor of the Year.
The East Elmhurst, N.Y.-based firm will be featured in the September print issue of ENR New York along with our annual Top Specialty Contractor rankings, which will include firms from New York and New Jersey.
The firm will also be recognized at the ENR New York Best Projects Awards breakfast on Nov. 12 at the Edison Ballroom in New York City.
Urban Foundation/Engineering gained notoriety for masterminding the complex lift of the old Palace Theater in 2022. The firm’s president, Tony Mazzo, won a Newsmaker in 2023 for the 30-ft Broadway theater lift.
And the firm has been growing its revenue ever since. With $75.31 million in regional revenue performed in 2022, Urban Foundation/Engineering ranked No. 10 on the 2023 ENR New York Specialty Contractors ranking.
Read the September issue of ENR New York to learn how they rank on this year's survey and to learn more about Urban Foundation/Engineering.
Some Urban Foundation/Engineering top recent projects include:
Red Hook Library
The design/build contract to raise the roof of the Red Hook Library in the Red Hook section of Brooklyn, NY, involves a final lift height of approximately 6.5 ft. In addition, the project includes building a new hydrostatic reinforced concrete mat foundation, which will raise the new first floor slab level above the new FEMA flood elevation. Lifting of the existing precast concrete roof, which spans an area of 8000 sf and weighs 500 tons, was accomplished within five hours using 25 custom built hydraulic lifting posts strategically located below the existing reinforced concrete roof girder system. The firm's proprietary lifting post design, which is designed to lift as much as 150 tons to a lift height of 8 ft, is currently patent pending, using its proprietary lifting methodology we previously invented to lift the Palace Theater. After the firm completed lifting of the precast concrete roof, it removed the existing concrete columns and replaced them with new structural steel columns before transferring the weight of the roof onto the new columns.
29 Jay St
Completed in June of 2023 in the DUMBO section of Brooklyn, N.Y., this excavation and concrete foundation project required excavating a 15 ft deep basement to a minimum depth of 5 ft below the groundwater table to create the below new cellar level for a new office building. The site is a corner lot, bounded on two sides by adjacent five and eight story buildings respectively. The other two sides of the site were bounded by narrow streets underlain by undersized 100-year-old combined sewers, which were coincidently being replaced and upgraded at the time. The developer was not aware that the existing sewers could not accept the anticipated volume of additional water discharged from our proposed wellpoint dewatering system. Accordingly, Urban proposed an alternative means and methodology to perform the excavation below groundwater level by eliminating the need for a formal dewatering system. The firm’s solution was to install a soil mixed impervious grout plug below the entire cellar footprint, deep enough to resist the upward hydrostatic pressure from below and prevent groundwater infiltration from below the new cellar level. The soil mix grout plug was keyed into two different impervious perimeter support of excavation systems. By introducing a drilled continuous secant wall along the two adjacent buildings and a continuous drilled soil mix and soldier beams wall along the two street sides, the firm was able to successfully prevent groundwater infiltration and completed the excavation and new foundation work in virtually a dry site.
10 Rockefeller Plaza
The firm recently completed a design/build project to install a temporary shoring system to temporarily support an existing 1100 tons building column in the lower parking garage level below 10 Rockefeller Plaza in NYC. The firm’s temporary shoring system was comprised of drilling four, 16 in. diameter, 300 tons capacity mini caissons in rock within 9 ft. of limited headroom. The four mini caissons supported a steel girder and welded bracket assembly, which enabled the firm to cut the steel column away from the existing footing prior to us excavating in rock and constructing a new reinforced concrete elevator pit to a final depth of 12 ft. Once the pit concrete attained its minimum design strength, the firm transferred the existing column load onto the new concrete pier at the corner of the new elevator pit.
