The patented Urban Foundation/Engineering methodology invented to lift the historic Palace Theater into a skyscraper in Manhattan by 2022 won recognition from New York company president Tony Mazzo as an ENR Newsmaker. But with $91.7 million in regional revenue by 2023, the company is also ranked No. 11 on the 2024 New York ENR specialty contractor list, a 21.8% increase over the total that reported in last year’s rankings.
Urban Foundation/Engineering was also ranked No. 362 on ENR’s latest national list of 600 specialty contractors, with $75.3 million in 2022 revenue, with an improvement expected when the ranking based on 2023 income will be published in the October 28 issue of the magazine.
For these reasons and more, ENR New York has named Urban Foundation/Engineering LLC, based in East Elmhurst, NY, as its 2024 Specialty Contractor of the Year. ENR Deputy Editor Jeff Rubenstone interviewed Mazzo, who has been president of the firm for more than 25 years, about its successful work and its regional market. This Q&A has been edited and condensed.
Recent Urban Foundation/Engineering projects at a glance:
Red Hook Library
The design-build contract to raise the roof of the city’s public library in the Red Hook section of Brooklyn involves a final elevation height of about 6.5 feet. The project includes the construction of a new hydrostatic reinforced concrete mat foundation, which will raise the new slab level of the first floor. above the new FEMA flood elevation mandate.
10 Rockefeller Plaza
The company recently completed a design-build project to install a temporary shoring system to support an existing 1,100-ton building column on the lower level of the parking garage below this skyscraper in downtown manhattan
29 Jay St.
Completed in mid-2023 in the DUMBO section of Brooklyn, this concrete foundation project required excavating a 15-foot-deep basement to a minimum depth of 5 feet below the water table to create the new cellar level of the office building
TSX Broadway at Times Square
Completed in early 2023, this project involved lifting the more than 7,000-ton, 100-year-old Palace Theater into a new skyscraper. The company’s US-patented hydraulic lift box allowed it to lift 600 tons in a single 30-foot stroke. A total of 34 hydraulic lift boxes brought the iconic 10,000 square meter theater to a final lift height of 30 feet in 15 days.
Q&A
Recently, Urban Engineering has seen an uptick in work. Is this a general trend in the New York area market or are there other reasons?
In the years since the pandemic, we’ve waited for the industry to come back and a lot of work has resurfaced. Incomes have increased because jobs are bigger, [with] larger contracts. Everything is timing. We’re doing some things we’ve never done before, and some things we’ve done before and specialized in.
We have experience in moving structures, and we are doing some of that, but a lot [what] what we’re currently doing is just more groundwork. Our trade stock is excavation, support and foundation excavation, concrete, deep drilled elements, caissons, piles and the like. But we are also doing new things [such as] deep mixing of the soil.
We have made deep dry walls [in order to] dig under water But now we are deep mixing the soil to create a grouted plug below a deep excavation. We are currently waiting to start three pumping stations in Queens for the [New York City Dept. of Environmental Protection]—some of which will drill deep plugs up to 50 feet deep to excavate and install and construct 40-foot-deep pump houses.
So let’s go a little further in that direction. But we also keep moving buildings. We are in preliminary talks to move a building to Yonkers, NY It is a bit premature to expand now.
Urban Foundation/Engineering in figures:
79 – Percentage of General Building Revenue in 2023
1965 – Year of foundation
150 – Number of employees
$14.1 million – Value of excavation/leveling work carried out in 2023
$29.2 million – Value of deep foundation works carried out in 2023
$37.3 million – Value of specific works carried out in 2023
$59.2 million – Contract value of the largest project completed in 2023
Does it build on previous work, like raising the Palace Theater and moving buildings in Manhattan?
In fact, the insurance companies almost insist on this, because there are only two that want to make sure that the first ones come and try things that have never been done before. So we fell for that [type of work] a little It started in 1998, when we moved the Empire Theater 170 feet down 42nd St. This new building [in Yonkers] is [larger] but almost the same weight, and we’ll also have to move it 170 feet into the ground and cut it in half because there’s not enough room for it to move to fit the entire building on the adjacent lot .
“These are the things that we long for as professional engineers. . . . We look for things as engineers that really impose our expertise.”
—Tony Mazzo, President, Urban Foundation/Engineering
So it’s a bit of creativity. These are the things we long for as professional engineers. I mean the day-to-day is wonderful, it pays the bills and it’s necessary because it allows the city to grow. But we look for things as engineers that actually impose our expertise, right?
I try to instill this in my younger engineers, to inspire them to see how we can create a better mousetrap. Or how we could do the job more safely or more economically or just because the need is there and no one has figured it out yet. This is Urban’s reputation in the private sector. We are not as visible in the public sector, but we are getting there.
Given your experience, are you concerned about passing on knowledge and know-how to the next generation more broadly?
My predecessors instilled in me the need to do my best to raise the bar for our industry and our craft, as well as the science of engineering in general. I was raised this way, and now I am [want others] follow in my footsteps, and they and I think that it is necessary to set an example.
I always try to maintain good relationships with our clients, take nothing for granted and not just follow the lines on paper.
A mentor once told me, “This is just someone else’s idea, Tony, these are just lines on paper.” When you look at it like that, now I hope to see if [the next generation] can find a better way to do something.
Don’t settle for someone else’s idea, I tell younger workers. Everyone has ideas, and as you develop in this industry, you’ll find that with all the experience you’ve gained from working in this great laboratory we know as the field, with its various jobs, you’ll have a different way. assume how things should be done.
I want to instill confidence in younger employees to deviate from the norms and the current state of construction to show the industry new techniques and how new challenges can be met.
