At 77, Julie Nasso still a force in the Big City.

Viewed a certain way, the story of Big City Development starts with a greedy plumber.

A few years back, Julia Nasso was having a simple sink repair done in her Long Island home when the plumber, dollar signs in his eyes, made his move.

"Suddenly he's saying I need this done, and that done ... He wants to replace a lot more than just the sink," Nasso said.

The plumber probably thought he had found an easy mark. After all, polite-and-petite Nasso was a women in her early seventies--not exactly of a demographic known for being savvy when it comes to dealing with contractors. But the plumber had bet wrong. He wasn't dealing with your average granny, but a woman with deep roots in residential construction and knowledge of the fully functional pipes the preying plumber was asking her to replace.

"That's when it all got started, I guess," said Nasso, who at 77 is president of her own construction management firm, Big City Development. "I started thinking about many women I know my age, many of them widows, getting taken advantage of, or busy young people expanding their houses who don't have time to look after every little thing ... It's important to have someone who can fit all the pieces together."

Nasso says fitting the pieces together is what Big City Development seeks to do for homeowners and co-op owners. The two-and-a-half year-old firm coordinates architects, brokers and contractors of various stripes while keeping a close eye on city and state ordinance to assure a project as much as possible avoids red-colored tape.

While such construction management has a long history in the commercial sector, it's a relatively new phenomenon in the residential sector.

"I only know of two other groups that do what we do," said Nasso. "One in Brooklyn and one in Florida ... But it's catching on."

The numbers seem to bear that out. Big City opened a new Long Island office in Garden City this spring and has plans to at least six new employees this year.

According to Joseph Carbone, Big City's vice president of finance and Nasso's nephew, the numbers make the need for residential construction management in New York obvious.

"Real Estate is worth so much right now that people can easily go out and get a $100,000 equity loan and use it for renovation," Carbone said. "Draw a line around Manhattan. People within a 45-minute commute aren't selling and moving to bigger homes elsewhere. They're staying where they are and building bigger on their own properties."

Nasso says that is especially true on Long Island, where there's been a steady increase in the scale of renovation desired.

"Everywhere you have these little Cape Cod houses that are being turned into three- and four-story properties," Nasso said. "People want more space."

It wouldn't surprise Nasso if her firm ends up renovating, adding-on to, or raising and rebuilding one of the very houses her father's firm built back in the decades following World War II, when Long Island was not concerned with building, not rebuilding.

Nasso worked for decades as "secretary, receptionist and general Girl Friday," for her father's construction management firm, S. Lanzo & Son Construction, quitting in 1965 under pressure from her father.

"At the time, women weren't supposed to be in the business, so I had to leave," she said. Nasso began work as a travel agent, rising through the ranks and eventually purchasing the firm Herren & Rogers. Some years after selling that firm, the scheming plumber helped pull her back into the construction business. She is now a proud member of Professional Women in Construction (PWC).

More than half a century after her first foray in the family business, Nasso says she expects those involved in construction and renovation to remain busy for some time to come.

"Basically, people aren't moving away from New York. People are moving to New York," she said. "So long as that's true, you'll have a lot of business."