Underneath the old brick Palace Theater, crews are preparing to lift it into place in the new TSX tower.
Photos courtesy of L&L Holding Co.
ENR New York has named Urban Foundation/Engineering LLC as the 2024 Specialty Contractor of the Year.
The East Elmhurst, NY-based company will be featured in the September print issue of ENR New York along with our annual specialty contractor rankings, which will include companies from New York and New Jersey.
The firm will also be recognized at the ENR New York Best Projects Awards have breakfast on November 12 at the Edison Ballroom in New York City.
Urban Foundation/Engineering gained notoriety for directing the complex elevator of the former Palace Theater in 2022. The firm’s president, Tony Mazzo, won a Newsmaker in 2023 for the 30-foot Broadway theater elevator.
And the company has been growing its revenue ever since. With $75.31 billion in regional revenue realized by 2022, Classification Urban Foundation/Engineering No. 10 in the 2023 New York ENR Specialty Contractors Ranking.
Read the September issue of ENR New York to find out how they rank in this year’s survey and learn more Urban Foundation/Engineering.
Some of Urban Foundation/Engineering’s most 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, New York involves a final elevation height of approximately 6.5 feet. Additionally, the project includes the construction of a new hydrostatic reinforced concrete footing, which will raise the level of the new first floor slab above the new FEMA flood elevation. The lifting of the existing precast concrete roof, covering an area of 8,000 square meters and weighing 500 tonnes, was achieved in five hours using 25 custom hydraulic lifting poles strategically placed below the reinforced concrete roof beam system existing The company’s proprietary lift design, which is designed to lift up to 150 tons to a lift height of 8 feet, is patent pending, using our proprietary lift methodology that we previously invented to lift the Palace Theatre. After the company completed lifting the precast concrete deck, it removed the existing concrete columns and replaced them with new structural steel columns before transferring the weight of the deck to the new columns.
29 Jay St
Completed in June 2023 in the DUMBO section of Brooklyn, New York, this excavation and concrete foundation project required excavating a 15-foot-deep basement to a minimum depth of 5 feet below the water table to create the of basement below the new office building. . The lot is a corner lot, bounded on two sides by adjacent buildings of five and eight floors respectively. The other two sides of the site were bounded by narrow streets supported by 100-year-old combined sewers, which coincidentally were being replaced and improved 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 well point dewatering system. Consequently, Urban proposed an alternative means and methodology to carry out the excavation below the groundwater level eliminating the need for a formal dewatering system. The company’s solution was to install a waterproof 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 level of the cellar The plug of the soil mixture was enclosed in two different waterproof perimeter supports of the excavation systems. By introducing a continuous perforated retaining wall along the two adjacent buildings and a continuous perforated soil mix and stud wall along both sides of the street, the company was able to successfully prevent the infiltration of ground water and completed the excavation and new foundation work in a virtually dry location. .
10 Rockefeller Plaza
The firm recently completed a design/build project to install a temporary shoring system to temporarily support an existing 1100-ton building column on the lower level of the parking garage below 10 Rockefeller Plaza in Nova York. The company’s temporary shoring system consisted of drilling four 16-inch-diameter, 300-ton capacity mini-boxes into rock within 9 feet of limited clearance. The four mini caissons supported a steel joist and a set of welded supports, which allowed us to cut the steel column away from the existing footing before digging into the rock and building a new reinforced concrete lift pit to a final depth of 12 feet. The pit concrete reached its minimum design strength, the company transferred the load from the existing column to the new concrete pier at the corner of the new lift pit.
Justin Rice is editor of ENR MidAtlantic and ENR New England
