Wednesday, February 23, 2011

HELP USA Groundbreaking!

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact:
Karen Higgins
A&E Communications, Inc.
610-831-5723
khiggins@aandecomm.com


Del-Sano Breaks Ground for HELP Genesis Urban Renewal Project in Newark, N.J.

Environmentally-friendly, High Performance, Affordable Housing Complex
Offers 56 Spacious Units to Residents of the South Ward

Union, N.J. – February 22, 2011 – Del-Sano Contracting Corporation, a general contracting, design/build and construction management services firm, celebrated the groundbreaking of the HELP USA Genesis II Urban Renewal Project, also known as the Newark Clinton Avenue Homes, on Friday, February 18. Once completed, the out of the ground building construction will pursue LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) Platinum certification and will provide affordable housing at the 634 Clinton Avenue, Newark, N.J address. In the groundbreaking ceremony held at the site, numerous dignitaries, including Newark Mayor Cory A. Booker, participated in the official commencement of the project.

“HELP USA is fulfilling a commitment to provide essential housing and living opportunities for low income and veteran families in the South Ward of Newark. Residents who qualify to live at the new complex will have a safe living environment that is energy efficient and a wholesome community within the neighborhood where they are most familiar,” said Angelo Del Russo, CEO of Del-Sano. “We are extremely proud to be the general contractor for this project and to be a team member with HELP USA and Kramer Marks Architects in fulfilling a mission that will ensure quality housing and services to such a worthy inner city. This is a great opportunity for us all to positively enable local residents and provide the ability to remain independent as their lives evolve.”

“Help USA is proud to be leading another private public partnership in Newark’s South Ward,” said Laurence Belinsky, president and CEO of HELP USA. “The project will not only be a LEED- Certified Gold or Platinum ‘green building,’ but will also include special units and support services for our nation’s veterans who have fallen on hard times. We welcome aboard Del-Sano to our 25-year tradition of building better lives for homeless and impoverished Americans.”
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HELP USA, an organization providing housing and the supportive services for the homeless and people in need, created the Genesis model in 1992 in which it provides a permanent service-enriched housing model for formerly homeless, low income and special needs households.

The Genesis II Urban Renewal project will be a mid-rise, multi-family, four-story, 56-unit residential building. The residents will qualify as low income individuals and families as well as disabled veterans. The LEED guided design will be universal and include one, two and three bedroom rental units; a community room; offices; a lounge; an exercise room; a children’s playroom; a computer room; and a laundry room for the residents. It also includes numerous high performance building and sustainable features, indoor air quality design, low emissions products and building materials, a vegetative green roof with a hardscaped terrace, and indoor parking garage.

The architect on the project is Kramer Marks Architects of Ambler, Pa. and the structural and site engineers are Betzwood Associates PC of Phoenixville, Pa. and Maser Consulting P.A. of Red Bank, N.J., respectively.

“HELP USA is a long-standing client of our firm and needed a contractor that had experience working in Newark, on affordable housing projects and with the New Jersey HFMA,” explained George Marks, owner of Kramer Marks Architects. “Del-Sano met those criteria and was able to work with us under a tight timeframe. We look forward to working with Del-Sano and anticipate the same level of professionalism that Del-Sano provided during the job costing and budget phase to continue during the construction phase of the project.”

About Del-Sano
Del-Sano Contracting Corporation is a leading provider of high quality general contracting construction; construction management and design build services. With a strong attention to detail, Del-Sano has been effectively providing its services to a wide array of clients since 1975. The company has been ranked by New York Construction magazine among the top general contractors in New Jersey. Headquartered in Union, N.J., the Del-Sano management team has built and managed projects for organizations in the healthcare, housing (i.e. affordable, special needs and aging communities), and institutional, recreational, educational, corporate, and retail industries. Del-Sano is a member of the United States Green Building Council and is committed to LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) for high performance buildings and sustainable construction. For more information on Del-Sano, visit www.delsano.com.

Thursday, January 27, 2011

VERY Tall Building!



Frame's Monitoring Program Confirms Design Assumption
by Nadine M. Post for ENR.com

An extensive program to survey and monitor the structural behavior and dynamic responses of the world’s tallest structure—the 828-meter Burj Khalifa in Dubai—has done more than validate the structural engineer’s design concepts. It could help improve future supertowers, says the keeper of the program. The monitoring system, which includes myriad sensors, will become a model for assessing critical and essential facilities, predicts Ahmad Abdelrazaq, an executive vice president of Samsung C&T Corp., Seoul, the burj’s lead builder.


The program “has given us information that will improve design for tall buildings and hopefully improve future structural systems [that use] new and more advanced materials,” says Abdelrazaq, a former structural engineer in the Chicago office of the burj’s design architect-engineer, Skidmore, Owings & Merrill. It will also give the owner information on the structural behavior under environmental conditions. That will allow better decisions about building operations, he adds.
Based on the behavior under lateral loads of the burj, a mostly concrete structure with a steel pinnacle, Abdelrazaq predicts that in generations to come, designers will be able to provide better-performing tall buildings that use less framing material.

The engineer also expects survey and monitoring programs to, over time, become an integral part of building design and “intelligent” building management systems, thanks to advances in computer technologies, fiber optic sensors, nanotechnology, dynamic monitoring devices, new global positioning system technologies and wireless monitoring techniques.
Dennis C.K. Poon, a managing principal of Thornton Tomasetti, New York City, which designed the world’s second-tallest building, the 508-m Taipei 101, agrees that the information from the burj’s program is beneficial to serve as a good reference for design criteria or assumptions for supertower design.
But, he says owners are often reluctant to install monitoring systems because of initial and operating costs. They are also often reluctant to share data, says Poon.
Measurements to date show the burj performing better than predicted for all building systems, at least during low-amplitude wind and seismic events, says Abdelrazaq. “We will continue monitoring all building components and examine all the assumptions made for analysis, design and construction for years to come.” He says performance data will be available to the design community.
During construction, the program gave immediate feedback regarding material strength, durability, elastic modulus, creep and shrinkage characteristics, total strain as a function of time, heat of hydration, cooling of the massive members and more. Post-construction data and details are also available on creep, shrinkage and foundation stiffness and dissipation of loads into the foundation system. This is important because the data could impact actual dynamic building stiffness and overall properties that must be considered in supertall buildings, says Abdelrazaq.
The program also gives feedback on tower acceleration since the completion of the building, which is currently being correlated to the predicted acceleration. This will allow an examination of basic assumptions made in wind tunnel tests and confirm whether present practice needs reexamination, says Abdelrazaq.
Assumptions during design about vortex shedding and damping under different wind and seismic events have been validated by the monitoring project. Feedback on the performance of the building’s steel pinnacle is also important to future design assumptions, especially regarding fatigue, says the engineer.
Calling the program “impressive,” John D. Hooper, a principal of structural firm Magnusson Klemencic Associates, Seattle, says it is not clear how the results will be directly applicable to other supertall buildings, given the burj’s unique configuration, height, structure and construction sequence. “The program’s apparent success does suggest that these efforts are valuable and should be considered for tall and unique structures,” he adds.

Monday, November 8, 2010

Green Affordable Housing is Going Mainstream


Just the Basics Once the Exception, Green Affordable Housing is Going Mainstream


Future development phases, expected to begin in a year or two, will build 1,000 units of mixed-income housing with 80 percent affordable.

Focusing on the Basics

As developers gain experience building green, many are adopting standard packages of green features. “It’s mainly nuts and bolts things like high efficiency boilers, good construction to make buildings air tight, balanced ventilation systems, proper lighting levels and lighting controls and low-flow plumbing fixtures,” explains Ryan Merkin, senior project manager, Steven Winter Associates, New York.

“The basics are what really make the most significant differences in building performance,” Stein says. “It’s the little things that add up to significant energy savings for a building,”

Courtlandt Corners I and II, a 423,000-sq.-ft. development with 323 apartments in four buildings on East 161st Street in the Bronx, takes this basic approach to sustainability. The project, designed by Dattner, features high performance building envelops, energy efficient HVAC systems, Energy Star appliances and lighting, apartments sealed for ventilation tightness and low flow plumbing fixtures. Completion is scheduled for the end of 2010.

Courtlandt’s developer, the Phipps Houses Group, New York, also enlisted Dattner to design a companion project called Courtlandt Crescent with similar sustainable features. The project will consist of two buildings housing 217 apartments and 10,000-sq.-ft. of community space. Construction is expected to start in July 2011.

Over the past 10 years developer Les Bluestone, cofounder of Huntington, N.Y.-based Blue Sea Development, has refined a set of methods and features now incorporated into all his affordable projects. He focuses on the core and shell, making sure the building is well insulated and sealed, and indoor air quality.

Instead of a central ventilation system Bluestone air seals and ventilates each apartment separately with a continuously running fan that “uses less energy than a light bulb. “Trickle vents at the windows guarantee a steady supply of fresh air. Low-VOC materials help ensure good indoor air quality.

This spring Bluestone completed the $15.3 million General Colin L. Powell Apartments in the South Bronx. The 7-story, 60,000-sq-ft building with 50 affordable coops uses 43 percent less energy than a comparable building and attained LEED Platinum and NYSERDA MPP certifications.

Bluestone, who is not afraid of trying new ideas, installed two, five kw micro co-generation units in the building that produce 100% of the project’s domestic hot water plus electricity for the common areas. Going forward, micro co-gen units will be installed in all his projects based on the system’s payback and efficiency.

Four blocks north Blue Sea partnered with Habitat for Humanity to build Prospect Macy, an affordable coop. The building includes a co-generation unit, a green roof, fitness room and landscaped play yard. Completion is slated for the end of 2010.

Construction will start in 2011 on an 8-story, 120-unit affordable rental project in Morrisania in the Bronx. This Blue Sea project features a 10,000-sq-ft rooftop greenhouse that will house an urban farm growing produce hydroponically for local distribution. The project will employ panelized wall systems and prefabricated bathroom modules to speed construction.

Green Innovations

Other innovative developers include the Richmond Group, which is using modular construction to build Park Terrace, a 4-story, 49-unit rental building for seniors in Yonkers, N.Y. The project, slated for completion in spring 2001, is seeking LEED Silver certification.

The modular housing units, constructed by Capsys Corporation at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, feature low emitting materials and finishes, Energy Star appliances and low-flow plumbing fixtures. The indoor assembly process reduces construction waste and creates very air-tight modules, Cirillo explains. The modules will be trucked to the site this fall and placed on completed foundations.

The Bluestone Organization, Fresh Meadows, N.Y., employed insulated concrete forms (ICF) to construct the wall system of The Andrew, a 50-unit affordable apartment building in Rego Park, Queens. ICF walls are formed by pouring concrete between two, 2.5-in polystyrene panels tied together with plastic or steel ties. The super insulated walls are very airtight with little thermal breaks, Merkin explains.

The developer is also using the wall system to construct the Calverts, six multi-family buildings in Harlem. The buildings, ranging in height from 4- to 8-stories, are seeking Energy Star and LEED certification. The projects are slated for completion between February and July 2011.

In March construction started on Via Verde, a $99 million complex in the South Bronx. The project developed by Phipps Houses and Jonathan Rose Companies, in partnership with Dattner Architects and Grimshaw Architects, is designed to achieve LEED Gold designation. Lettire is the project’s general contractor.

The 288,000-sq.-ft. development will create 222 units in three buildings; a 20-story tower at the north end, a 6-13-story mid-rise building in the middle and townhouses to the south, organized around a central courtyard. The buildings step down along the length of the site creating a series of green roofs. Solar panels will cover the vertical walls of the steps. The highly insulated buildings are clad in a rain screen, which provides for a more water tight envelope for the building, Stein says.

November 1, 2010
By Diane Greer, New York Construction

Tuesday, June 15, 2010

Traffic causes delays, lost productivity for N.J. construction firms

Friday, June 11, 2010 01:50 PM By Evelyn Lee Evelyn Lee Evelyn Lee covers real estate, economic development and the environment for NJBIZ. She has been a staff reporter here since 2006.

Traffic congestion, and the resulting delays, are costing the nation’s construction firms some $23 billion a year — and New Jersey companies, in some ways, are more affected than their counterparts in other states, according to a new analysis released Thursday by the Associated General Contractors of America, in Washington, D.C.

New Jersey mirrored the nation in that 93 percent of the firms that were surveyed reported that traffic congestion and shipping unreliability had an impact on their operations — but 50 percent of local companies characterized that impact as “significant,” compared to only 22 percent nationally. Nearly 1,200 construction firms participated in the survey, including 25 from the Garden State.



Twenty-one percent of local general contractors, moreover, said that their cost of doing business increased by 11 percent or more because of delays, wasted fuel and other traffic impacts, while only 9 percent of firms nationally said the same, according to the survey results.

Traffic delays and congestion have lead to more than 30 hours per worker per year of lost productivity for 21 percent of New Jersey companies, about level with the national average, the survey said. Meanwhile, 64 percent of survey respondents said they had made changes to schedules or business operations because of traffic congestion and unreliable shipping schedules.

For example, Del-Sano Contracting Corp., a Union-based general contractor, has implemented practices to adjust to traffic congestion near some construction sites, particularly those in the state’s urban areas.

The firm’s employees generally get to work sites early in the morning and on time, said Angelo Del Russo, the company’s president. But “if the traffic has mounted up and stalled, it could hold things up for deliveries” of construction materials, and in turn add overtime to the project, he said.

“There’s a planning process that goes on,” Del Russo said. “What we try to do is just anticipate ahead of time what the traffic patterns are around our particular sites.” The company will post signage a day or two before the start of construction to alert residents about the project in the area.

Also, “there is a need to have professional help from the local police department to keep [traffic] moving,” he said. For example, on one recent project in Union City, police had traffic patterns set up to allow 25 trucks delivering concrete to get in and out of the site as quickly as possible.

“We’ve taken these measures, and it lessens the impact” of traffic, he said.

Go to actual link:
http://www.njbiz.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=82244:report-traffic-causes-delays-lost-productivity-for-nj-construction-firms&catid=34:daily-news&Itemid=109

Thursday, May 13, 2010

CEO Angelo Del Russo Speaks at Crane's Mill Ribbon Cutting


CEO of DelSano Contracting speaks at the ribbon cutting of the completed Crane's Mill Project, in New Jersey.

Angelo Del Russo followed his passion for construction early in his career. Energized by his desire to create a construction company devoted to quality and craftsmanship, Mr. Del Russo incorporated Del-Sano Contracting in 1975. Today, he proudly oversees a company that regularly ranks as one of the top performers in the New York/New Jersey metro area. Mr. Del Russo graduated from The New Jersey Institute of Technology with a degree in civil engineering technology. He has served as Secretary and Treasurer of E.L.A Associates, published numerous industry articles, and is a member of several trade and business associations including the United States Green Builders Council.

Crane's Mill
Phase II will complete the residential development of the campus with the addition of 70 Residential apartments with 47 underground parking spaces and 10 cottages. The project is planned to consist of a two story, (118,550 sq ft) structure with underground parking to be built and directly linked to the existing central facility building; completing the campus development. Ten cottages with attached garages (23,900 sq ft) are also included in Phase II.

Tuesday, September 22, 2009





Del-Sano Contracting Corp. Honored with New York Construction's'Best of 2009' Award for Garden Street Lofts
September 21, 2009, Hoboken, NJ - New York Construction has awarded Del-Sano Contracting Corp. (http://www.delsano.com/) an Award of Merit in the Green Building category as part of its "Best of 2009 Awards" for Garden Street Lofts (http://www.gardenstreetlofts.com/). Garden Street Lofts is a luxury residential building in Hoboken, New Jersey. Del-Sano served as the general contractor for the $16.8-million redevelopment project, which was completed in February 2009.
New York Construction's "Best of Awards" is an annual awards program dedicated to honoring the region's best projects and the companies that design and build them. Award criteria included Teamwork and Project Management, Safety, Innovation, Contribution to the Community or Industry, Overcoming Unique or Difficult Challenges, Construction Quality and Craftsmanship, and Function and Aesthetic Quality of the Design.
Garden Street Lofts was redeveloped from an existing 42,888-square-foot, structural steel, concrete and masonry, former coconut processing and storage warehouse that was erected in 1919. Del-Sano built a new 35,054-square-foot, seven-story structural steel and concrete addition with gauged metal-perimeter wall framing and a Zinc rain screen façade. The addition rises above and is linked to the restored cast-in-place concrete building at the original fifth floor roof level. The mixed-use complex includes 30-luxuriously appointed one-, two-, and three-bedroom, loft-style condominiums. Also, at ground level there is a total 7,500 square feet of open floor plan that is suited for prime retail space facing 14th and Garden Streets.
The Garden Street Lofts is awaiting certification as the first Silver LEED luxury residential hi-rise development in New Jersey. The building uses 24% less energy in heating cooling and lighting, as well as 20% less water than a traditional building, and 100% of its electrical power is generated from wind and other renewable resources.
In addition to the many sustainable and energy efficient elements of the building, Del-Sano's handling of the construction process itself, as well as the worksite were noteworthy. "The challenges of bringing this project to life were many, not the least of which was how to preserve, recycle and transform architectural history by converting the Hostess coconut-processing warehouse into a state-of-the-art, high performance 'green' building while initiating creative cost containment measures," explained Angelo Del Russo, Founder and CEO of Del-Sano Contracting.
"Preserving an old structure while wrapping a new structure around and above it is no easy task. Another preservation challenge was to make certain the integrity of the walls and structure remained intact for restoration and rehabilitation," noted Del- Russo. "The restriction of the existing lot size and position also presented challenges, particularly for structural design and building methods. But ultimately, we were able to work around these challenges, afford the client some significant cost savings through our building methodologies, and deliver a beautiful building to the client that stands as a model for sustainable residential development in New Jersey."
Project team members were:
Architect: Sharples Holden Pasquarelli Architects, New York, NY
MEPS Engineer: Buro Happold, New York, NY
Project Financing: TD Bank, Ramsey, NJ
Marketing Agent: Hudson Place Realty, Hoboken, NJ
LEED Commissioning Agent, Dome-Tech Group, Edison, NJ
About Bijou PropertiesGarden Street Lofts was developed by Bijou Properties (http://www.bijouproperties.com/), which has already received recognition for successfully redeveloping urban properties and for the adaptive re-use of a former industrial and warehouse building along the Hudson River waterfront. The company is committed to incorporating sustainable design and construction into its projects.
About Del-Sano Contracting Corp. Del-Sano Contracting Corp. (http://www.delsano.com/), a member of the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC), is a skilled and qualified builder of LEED-registered projects. The firm is committed to setting new standards for sustainable development through ongoing education and training, responsible use of natural resources, and the integration of principles of sustainable development in its day-to-day activities and client projects.
Established in 1975, Del-Sano provides full-service, commercial general construction and construction management services to a distinguished and diverse client base located throughout the New York metropolitan area. The firm, which ranks among the 25 largest general contractors in New Jersey, is engaged in the construction and development of commercial, institutional, retail, multifamily (including senior, affordable and luxury housing) high-rise, multi-level and framed structures, as well as recreational facilities and historic renovation projects.