NYS and NYC M/WBE Certified Contractor
When you’re gutting a kitchen or opening up a floor plan in a Garden City South home, the biggest risk isn’t the demo itself — it’s what turns up during it. Asbestos floor tiles, textured ceilings, pipe insulation in the basement — these aren’t rare finds in a 1950s home. They’re the baseline. A contractor who can only handle the physical demolition leaves you scrambling to find an abatement company before work can legally continue.
We handle everything under one contract, which means no scheduling gap between the abatement crew and the demo crew. No finger-pointing when something unexpected shows up behind a wall. One team, one timeline, one point of contact from the first site visit to the final clearance test.
The density of Garden City South also matters here. Homes on these blocks sit close together — small yards, shared property lines, neighbors who notice when a contractor isn’t managing dust and debris properly. The way this work gets done affects more than just your property, and that’s something worth asking about before you sign anything.
Green Island Group is a Nassau County-based environmental contracting and demolition company operating throughout Garden City South and the surrounding area. We handle residential gut renovations, commercial buildouts, and municipal projects — all requiring the same thing: a team that can handle hazardous materials and structural demolition without splitting the job between two contractors.
In Nassau County, asbestos abatement isn’t just a state-level requirement. The county requires contractors to hold an Environmental Hazard Remediation Provider license on top of the NYS Department of Labor certification. We carry both, along with the Nassau County Home Improvement Contractor license required to pull permits through the Town of Hempstead Building Department — which governs all demolition work in Garden City South.
Our customers consistently mention fast responses, clear communication, and a team that showed up when we said we would. In a community like Garden City South, where word-of-mouth travels fast, that track record matters.
It starts with a site assessment. Before any work begins, we send a certified NYS DOL asbestos inspector to survey the property for hazardous materials — this is a legal requirement under New York State Industrial Code Rule 56 before any renovation or demolition that could disturb suspect materials. For a 1950s home in Garden City South, this step almost always turns up something. That’s exactly why we do it first.
If asbestos or lead is present, we handle abatement before demolition begins. Our licensed team manages containment, removal, and disposal with full chain-of-custody documentation. Every material removed from your property gets tracked from your address to a licensed disposal facility — and you receive that paperwork when the job is done.
Once the space is cleared and post-abatement air testing confirms it’s clean, structural demolition proceeds. We pull permits through the Town of Hempstead Building Department in our name — not yours. Required inspections are scheduled and managed by us. Utility disconnection verification is handled before any structural work touches the building. By the time we’re done, your project has a documented, inspectable file — the kind that matters when you go to sell the house or pull your next permit.
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We handle residential interior demolition, full structural demolition, selective demo for targeted renovation work, and commercial demolition for business properties in and around Garden City South and the Franklin Square corridor. Our scope is built around what the project actually requires — not a fixed package that leaves out the parts most contractors don’t want to deal with.
For residential projects in Garden City South, that typically means asbestos survey and abatement, lead paint assessment, structural demolition, debris removal, and post-remediation clearance testing — all documented and permitted through the Town of Hempstead. If your home was built in the 1950s, which describes the overwhelming majority of homes in Garden City South, the hazardous materials component is almost always part of the conversation. A quote that doesn’t include it isn’t a complete quote.
Commercial clients in the surrounding area — small businesses along Hempstead Turnpike, investment properties near Nassau Boulevard, or commercial spaces near the Roosevelt Field corridor — get the same licensed, documented approach. Bonding capacity, proper insurance, and a project management process that holds up to commercial-grade scrutiny. If you’re not sure what your project requires, the assessment call is where that gets sorted out — before anything is signed.
For most interior demolition work — removing walls, gutting a kitchen, opening up a floor plan — yes, a permit is required through the Town of Hempstead Building Department, which has jurisdiction over Garden City South as an unincorporated hamlet. The permit has to be pulled by a licensed contractor, not the homeowner. If a contractor asks you to pull your own permit, that’s worth pausing on — it usually means they’re not licensed to pull it themselves.
The Town of Hempstead recently launched an online permit portal that allows for digital submission, status tracking, inspection requests, and direct communication with town staff. We manage this process as the contractor of record. You don’t need to navigate the Building Department on your own — that’s part of what you’re hiring a licensed contractor to handle.
Almost certainly, yes — at least in some form. Homes built in the 1950s fall squarely within the highest-risk window for asbestos-containing materials. The most common locations are 9×9 vinyl floor tiles in kitchens and bathrooms, spray-applied ceiling texture, pipe insulation in the basement around original boiler systems, and joint compound used throughout the interior. None of these are visible to the naked eye — you can’t tell by looking at them whether they contain asbestos.
This is why a mandatory asbestos survey by a certified NYS DOL inspector is required before any renovation or demolition that could disturb these materials. It’s not optional, and it’s not something to skip to save time. If testing comes back negative, the project moves forward faster. If it comes back positive, you now know exactly what you’re dealing with before anyone starts swinging a hammer.
There are several layers, and Nassau County has requirements that go beyond what the state mandates. At the state level, contractors performing asbestos abatement must hold a NYS Department of Labor Asbestos Handling Contractor license, and individual workers must be certified under Industrial Code Rule 56. That’s the baseline across New York State.
Nassau County adds its own requirement on top of that: abatement contractors must hold an Environmental Hazard Remediation Provider license, and technicians must hold an EHRT credential. These are county-specific and apply to every abatement project in Garden City South. Additionally, any residential contractor working in Nassau County needs a current Nassau County Home Improvement Contractor license — and no building permit can be issued without it on file. When you’re comparing quotes, ask each contractor to confirm they hold all three: the NYS DOL license, the Nassau County EHRP, and the Nassau County HIC license.
We are responsible for proper containment, transport, and disposal of all asbestos-containing materials removed from your property. This isn’t just a best practice — it’s a legal requirement. Asbestos waste must be transported to a licensed disposal facility under a chain-of-custody manifest that tracks the material from your address to the landfill.
We provide disposal manifests to every client as a standard deliverable at the end of the project. This documentation matters more than most homeowners realize at the time. When you go to sell your Garden City South home, when you apply for future permits, or when an inspector asks what happened to the asbestos that was in your 1950s floor tiles, that paperwork is your answer. A contractor who completes abatement without providing disposal documentation is leaving you exposed.
It depends on scope and what the asbestos survey turns up, but here’s a realistic breakdown. A mandatory asbestos survey typically takes one to two days to complete, with lab results returned within a few business days. If abatement is required — which it usually is in a 1950s Garden City South home — that process can take anywhere from a few days to a week or more depending on the volume of material and the size of the affected area. Post-abatement air clearance testing adds another step before demolition can begin.
Once abatement is cleared, the physical demolition phase for a standard interior gut — kitchen, bathroom, or basement — typically runs one to three days. Permitting through the Town of Hempstead is handled in parallel where possible to avoid stacking delays. Skipping the asbestos step to save time almost always costs more time in the end, either from stop-work orders, re-inspection requirements, or remediation after the fact.
Technically, homeowners can perform some of their own work — but in a 1950s Garden City South home, the hazardous materials issue changes the picture significantly. You cannot legally disturb asbestos-containing materials without proper licensing, containment, and disposal protocols under NYS Industrial Code Rule 56. Doing so without a licensed contractor doesn’t just create a regulatory problem — it creates a health risk for your family and anyone else in the home, and it creates a liability issue that follows the property, not just the person who did the work.
Beyond the asbestos question, unpermitted demolition work in Nassau County can complicate future permit applications, title searches, and home sales. The Town of Hempstead requires permits for structural work, and work done without them creates a paper trail problem that’s expensive to resolve later. For cosmetic, non-structural work that clearly doesn’t involve hazardous materials, DIY may be reasonable. For anything involving walls, ceilings, floors, or mechanical systems in a 1950s home, the cost of getting it wrong is almost always higher than the cost of hiring it out correctly.
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