NYS and NYC M/WBE Certified Contractor
Harbor Hills homes are predominantly mid-century construction — built in the 1940s, 50s, and 60s when asbestos was used in everything from floor tile adhesive to pipe insulation to ceiling texture. That’s not a maybe. It’s a near-certainty in this zip code. When we come in, the assessment, the abatement, and the demolition all happen under one contract. The project keeps moving.
Your home on the Great Neck Peninsula represents serious value — median prices here are close to $1.4 million. A stop-work order, an unpermitted demo job, or an asbestos violation doesn’t just delay your renovation. It creates a paper trail that follows your property. Getting it done right the first time protects that value, keeps your certificate of occupancy clean, and gives you documentation you can hand to a title company without hesitation.
Most homeowners in Harbor Hills don’t realize the demolition and the hazardous materials removal have to be handled by the same licensed team — or the project stalls. We’ve seen too many renovations pause mid-work because asbestos was discovered and the general contractor wasn’t licensed to handle it. By that point, you’re scrambling to find a separate abatement company, scheduling a new assessment, and losing weeks on your timeline.
We eliminate that scenario entirely. We’re licensed for both the abatement and the demolition, so if something turns up during the work, we handle it without stopping the clock on your project.
Green Island Group is a full-service environmental contracting and demolition company based on Long Island, serving residential and commercial clients across Nassau County and beyond. We hold a New York State Department of Labor Asbestos Handling Contractor License, a Nassau County Home Improvement Contractor License, and EPA Renovation, Repair and Painting certification — the credentials that actually matter when you’re tearing into a pre-1980 home in Harbor Hills or anywhere on the Great Neck Peninsula.
What sets us apart isn’t just the licensing. It’s that the same team that assesses your home is the team that abates it and demolishes it. There’s no subcontracting the hazmat phase to a company you’ve never met. Everything is documented — disposal manifests, clearance testing, permit records — so you have a complete paper trail when the job is done.
We’ve worked throughout Harbor Hills and the surrounding North Hempstead area, and we understand what the Town of North Hempstead’s permit office requires, what older North Shore homes typically contain, and what it takes to keep a project on schedule when the stakes are high. We know the specific challenges of mid-century construction in this community — the boiler rooms with asbestos-wrapped pipes, the ceiling textures that need testing, the mechanical spaces where hazmat issues are most likely to surface.
It starts with a site assessment. Before any work begins, we evaluate your property to identify the scope of demolition and flag any hazardous materials — asbestos, lead paint, or other regulated substances that are common in Harbor Hills’s mid-century housing stock. This step isn’t optional. Under New York State law, a pre-demolition survey is required when regulated materials may be present, and in a community where most homes were built before 1980, that’s nearly every project.
Once the assessment is complete, we handle the permit process with the Town of North Hempstead’s Department of Building, Safety, Inspection and Enforcement. As a Nassau County HIC-licensed contractor, we pull the permit in our name — which means the work is on record, inspected, and legally documented. You don’t have to figure out the Town’s OpenGov permit platform or chase down paperwork.
Then the work begins. Abatement happens first, in compliance with NYS DOL requirements, followed by the demolition phase. Post-project air clearance testing is conducted by a licensed air monitor and provided to you as documentation. When the job is finished, you have a clean site, a complete file, and the confidence that nothing was cut short.
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We don’t stop the moment we find something unexpected. We handle the full scope — interior demolition, selective demolition, structural demolition, and the licensed hazardous materials abatement that has to happen before or alongside the physical work. For Harbor Hills homeowners doing kitchen gut renovations, bathroom overhauls, basement conversions, or full interior projects, that integrated capability is the difference between a project that moves and one that sits.
Older boiler rooms and mechanical spaces are among the highest-risk areas in homes of this era. Pipe insulation, boiler block, and duct wrap in mid-century heating systems routinely contain asbestos at levels that require licensed removal before any mechanical work or demolition can proceed. We’re equipped for exactly that — not just the demo side, but the abatement that unlocks it.
Every project includes permit coordination with the Town of North Hempstead, proper disposal with chain-of-custody manifests, and post-project clearance documentation you can keep on file. For homeowners in Harbor Hills dealing with moisture intrusion, storm damage, or water-compromised walls and ceilings, we also handle the remediation side before demolition begins — so you’re not managing two separate contractors for what is ultimately one problem.
Yes — demolition work in Harbor Hills requires a permit from the Town of North Hempstead’s Department of Building, Safety, Inspection and Enforcement. Because Harbor Hills is an unincorporated hamlet, it falls under North Hempstead’s jurisdiction rather than an incorporated village’s, which means all permits go through the town. The contractor pulling that permit must hold a valid Nassau County Home Improvement Contractor license — so if a contractor asks you to pull the permit yourself, that’s often a sign they can’t pull it on their own.
As of March 2026, the Town of North Hempstead processes all new permit applications through the OpenGov platform. We’re familiar with this system and handle permit coordination as part of the project — you don’t have to navigate it yourself. The permit creates a legal record that the work was inspected and completed properly, which matters when you’re protecting a property valued near $1.4 million in a school district as competitive as Great Neck.
The honest answer is: you don’t know until it’s tested. But if your home was built before 1980 — which covers the vast majority of Harbor Hills’s housing stock — the probability is high. Asbestos was used widely in floor tile adhesives, pipe insulation, boiler block, ceiling texture, joint compound, and roofing materials throughout the 1940s, 50s, 60s, and into the 70s. You can’t identify it visually, and disturbing it without proper testing and licensed removal is a violation of New York State law.
Under EPA NESHAP regulations, a pre-demolition asbestos survey is required for structures above threshold size before demolition begins. We conduct this assessment as part of the project intake process. If regulated materials are found, we handle the abatement under our NYS DOL Asbestos Handling Contractor License before demolition proceeds. You get documentation of what was found, how it was removed, and where it was disposed — a complete record that protects you legally and as a future seller.
Yes — and ideally, that’s exactly how it should work. In New York State, asbestos abatement must be performed by a contractor holding a NYS Department of Labor Asbestos Handling Contractor License. Demolition work in Nassau County requires a Nassau County Home Improvement Contractor license. Most demolition contractors hold one or the other, not both — which is why so many projects stall when asbestos is discovered mid-job.
We hold both licenses, which means the abatement and the demolition happen under one contract with one team. There’s no pause while you find a separate abatement company, no gap in accountability, and no risk of the two crews working at cross-purposes. For a renovation on a high-value property in Harbor Hills, that continuity matters — both for your timeline and for the legal documentation that follows the project.
If asbestos-containing materials are discovered during a renovation, work in that area has to stop until a licensed abatement contractor can assess and remove the material safely. Under New York State law, you cannot simply continue demolition around it or have an unlicensed worker handle the removal. The material has to be properly contained, removed by a NYS DOL-licensed contractor, and disposed of at a licensed facility with a chain-of-custody manifest.
This is one of the most common points where renovation projects in older Harbor Hills homes hit a wall — the general contractor isn’t licensed for abatement, so the homeowner has to find a separate company, schedule a new assessment, and wait. If you hire us from the start, that scenario doesn’t happen. We’re already licensed for abatement, so if something turns up during demolition, the same team handles it without stopping the clock on your project.
Timeline depends on the scope of work, but for a typical interior demolition — a kitchen gut, bathroom demo, or basement teardown — you’re generally looking at one to three days of active work once permits are in place and any hazardous materials have been addressed. If asbestos abatement is required first, that adds time depending on the volume of material and the containment requirements under NYS DOL protocols.
The bigger timeline variable in Harbor Hills is usually the permit process, not the physical work. The Town of North Hempstead requires a permit for demolition, and processing times vary. We submit permit applications early in the project process to minimize delays. For homeowners working around a school year schedule — which is common in a Great Neck Union Free School District community where families plan major renovations around summer — getting the permit process started as early as possible is the most important thing you can do to protect your timeline.
Post-demolition clearance testing is air sampling conducted after asbestos abatement to confirm that airborne fiber levels in the work area are below the regulatory threshold for safe reoccupancy. It’s performed by a licensed NYS DOL Air Monitor — a separate credentialed professional from the abatement crew — and the results are documented in a written clearance report. In New York State, this testing is required after regulated asbestos abatement before the containment can be removed and the space reoccupied.
For Harbor Hills families, this documentation does more than satisfy a regulatory checkbox. It’s the written proof that the air in your home is safe — not just a contractor’s word that the work was done correctly. It also becomes part of your property’s record, which matters when you eventually sell. Buyers, title companies, and attorneys increasingly ask for abatement documentation on older homes, and a clean clearance report is the kind of paperwork that protects your sale. We provide this as a standard deliverable on every abatement project, not an add-on.
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