NYS and NYC M/WBE Certified Contractor
When you’re dealing with a home built in the 1940s or 1950s which describes most of Hollis the demo itself is rarely the hard part. It’s what’s inside the walls that slows everything down. Asbestos in the floor tiles, lead in the paint, mold behind the drywall from a basement that’s flooded more than once. If your contractor isn’t licensed to handle all of that, they have to stop work and wait for someone who is. That gap costs you time, money, and a whole lot of frustration.
We’re one of the few contractors in the Queens market that holds both NYC Department of Buildings demolition authorization and NYS Department of Labor asbestos abatement certification. That means when asbestos turns up in your Hollis colonial and statistically, it probably will the project doesn’t stop. The abatement and the demolition are handled by the same licensed crew, on the same timeline, under the same contract.
For homeowners dealing with storm damage or flooding, that matters even more. Hollis has a documented flooding problem the city invested over $44 million in sewer upgrades specifically for this neighborhood. When water gets into your walls, mold follows within 24 to 48 hours. You need a contractor who can respond fast and handle the remediation and structural demo without you having to coordinate two separate companies.
We’ve been doing demolition and environmental remediation in the New York metro area for over 12 years. That’s 340-plus completed projects across Long Island, Queens, and all five boroughs including the pre-war and mid-century residential structures that line the blocks between Hillside Avenue and Jamaica Avenue in Hollis.
We’re not a demo-only operation. Asbestos abatement, lead abatement, mold remediation, water damage restoration, and structural demolition are all handled in-house, under one license. That’s a real operational difference not a marketing point. When you hire separate contractors for abatement and demo, you’re managing two schedules, two invoices, and two sets of liability. We remove that entirely.
We also bill insurance carriers directly for disaster-related work, which matters in a neighborhood that’s seen its share of flooding events. If you’re coming out of a storm, a fire, or a water damage situation in Hollis, you’ve already got enough to deal with.
It starts with a site assessment. Before anything gets touched, we walk the property and look for what older Hollis homes typically contain asbestos-containing materials in flooring, ceilings, and pipe insulation, lead paint beneath layers of renovation work, and any moisture or mold issues that need to be addressed before demo begins. This isn’t optional in New York City. NYC Local Law 76 requires a hazardous material investigation before any renovation or demolition project in the five boroughs. We handle that investigation as part of the process.
From there, we manage permitting with the NYC Department of Buildings. If abatement is required and in a home built in the 1940s, it almost always is that work happens first, with licensed crews, proper containment, and air clearance testing before demolition begins. Once the structure is clear, demo proceeds on a defined schedule. Utility disconnections are confirmed beforehand. Debris is removed and properly disposed of. The site is left clean.
What you won’t get is a crew that shows up, starts swinging, and then hits a wall literally when they find something that requires a license we don’t have. The whole sequence, from investigation to cleared site, is planned before the first tool comes out.
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We handle the full range of demolition work in Hollis interior gut demolition for kitchen and bathroom renovations, partial structural demo for additions and conversions, and full building demolition for properties that have reached the end of their useful life. For two-family homes, aging colonials, and structures that have been sitting through decades of deferred maintenance, that scope matters.
Every project includes pre-demolition hazardous material testing, licensed asbestos and lead abatement where required, DOB permit management, utility coordination, debris removal, and site cleanup. In Queens, where the DOB permit process and NYS DOL abatement requirements run on separate tracks, having one contractor who navigates both is a genuine time-saver. You’re not chasing two sets of paperwork or waiting on two separate inspection schedules.
For properties affected by flooding a real and recurring issue in Hollis, where storm events have repeatedly overwhelmed the neighborhood’s drainage infrastructure we also provide emergency water damage response, mold remediation, and post-flood demolition. If your basement took on water, if your walls are saturated, if mold has already started, we can respond the same day and handle everything that comes next. No referrals, no handoffs.
Yes and the type of permit depends on what you’re doing. In New York City, interior demolition that doesn’t affect the building’s structure, occupancy, or egress typically requires an Alt2 permit from the NYC Department of Buildings. If you’re doing anything that touches structural elements load-bearing walls, beams, foundation work the requirements go up from there and usually involve a registered design professional.
On top of the DOB permit, NYC Local Law 76 requires an asbestos investigation before any renovation or demolition project in the five boroughs. This applies to your Hollis home regardless of how small the job seems. If asbestos is found above threshold levels, a licensed abatement contractor has to handle removal before demo can proceed. We manage the permit process and the hazardous material investigation together, so you’re not trying to coordinate that on your own.
Not definitively but the odds are high enough that you should assume it does until testing says otherwise. The EPA estimates that 87% of homes built before 1940 contain lead-based paint, and asbestos was a standard building material through the late 1970s. In Hollis, where the median construction year is 1949 and roughly half the housing stock was built before 1950, the presence of asbestos-containing materials is the statistical norm, not the exception.
Common locations in homes from that era include floor tiles, ceiling tiles, pipe insulation, joint compound around drywall seams, roofing materials, and exterior siding. A single structure can have multiple types of asbestos-containing materials layered throughout. The only way to know for certain is a proper inspection by a licensed professional. We conduct that investigation before any demolition work begins that’s how you avoid the mid-project discovery that stops a job cold and blows the budget.
Work stops until it’s properly handled that’s the short answer. Under NYS Industrial Code Rule 56 and USEPA NESHAP regulations, asbestos above certain threshold quantities must be removed by a licensed abatement contractor before demolition can continue. The abatement process includes proper containment, licensed removal, air monitoring during the work, and air clearance testing after which is required by state law and performed by an independent monitor.
For most homeowners, this is where projects go sideways. They hire a demo-only contractor, asbestos turns up, and now they’re waiting for a second company to come in, coordinate with the first, and complete abatement before anyone can pick up where they left off. That gap can add weeks to a project timeline. Because we’re licensed for both abatement and demolition, the discovery of asbestos changes the sequence of work but it doesn’t stop the project or require you to bring in a separate contractor.
It depends heavily on the scope and what the pre-demo investigation turns up. Interior gut demolition for a single room in a Hollis home might run a few thousand dollars. A full structural demolition of a two-family home involves DOB permits, utility disconnection coordination, debris hauling, and potentially asbestos abatement and costs scale accordingly. In New York City specifically, permit fees, licensed abatement requirements, and regulated disposal of hazardous materials add costs that don’t exist in other markets.
The most important thing to understand is that the cheapest bid almost always becomes the most expensive project. A contractor who quotes low and then discovers asbestos mid-job or worse, one who isn’t licensed to handle it and skips the step creates liability and cost that lands on you as the property owner. We provide detailed project scoping upfront so you know what’s included, what the permit process looks like, and what the full cost range is before any work begins. No surprises after the fact.
Usually both, depending on how bad the damage is and how long the water sat. Hollis has a well-documented flooding history the city spent over $44 million on sewer and water main upgrades specifically for this neighborhood because flooding had been a persistent problem for decades. Even after those improvements, major storm events like Hurricane Ida in 2021 caused significant flooding in the area. When water gets into walls, floors, and structural framing, mold begins growing within 24 to 48 hours.
Remediation handles the water extraction, drying, and mold treatment. But if walls, flooring, or structural elements have absorbed enough moisture to compromise their integrity or if mold has spread significantly selective demolition of those materials is necessary before any restoration work can happen. We handle both sides of that. We respond to emergency calls around the clock, assess what’s damaged versus what can be saved, and handle the remediation and any necessary structural demo as one continuous project. You don’t need to find two separate contractors while your basement is still wet.
In New York City, legitimate demolition contractors need to be authorized through the NYC Department of Buildings that’s what allows them to legally pull permits and perform structural work in the five boroughs. You can verify a contractor’s DOB license status directly through the NYC DOB’s online license search. If a contractor can’t point you to a verifiable license number, that’s a problem.
For any project involving asbestos which, in a Hollis home built before 1980, is most of them the contractor also needs to hold the appropriate certification under NYS Department of Labor Industrial Code Rule 56. There are nine separate license categories under that rule, and not every contractor holds the right ones for the scope of work they’re quoting. Ask specifically what license categories they hold and what types of abatement they’re certified to perform. We hold both NYC DOB authorization and NYS DOL asbestos abatement certification, and we’re happy to walk you through exactly what that covers before you make any decisions.
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