Exterior maintenance competitive tool.

Exterior maintenance competitive tool

The recent difficulty in commercial leasing has made way for what we now call competitive exterior maintenance. This means owners are now willing to contract for exterior restoration work which may not be an absolute emergency, but will make their properties much more attractive to potential tenants. Once such example is a recent restoration job Tindel completed at 60 Bay Street, a 10-story office building on Staten Island.

When Muss Development Company, the Forest Hills-based real estate firm which owns and manages 60 Bay Street, contracted with us, it was for a rather extensive restoration project. We were to: demolish and reconstruct the building's parapet wall; demolish and reconstruct cracked exterior corners from the ninth floor to the ground; remove the outer wythe of brick on one floor of the south elevation and then apply a layer of waterproofing and new brick; perform miscellaneous joint restoration and roofing replacement.

The most interesting part of the job, however, was that much of the work was not an immediate necessity, but rather a choice for improvement. This shows extreme foresight on the part of Muss Development. Such restoration work done early on will not only make a building more leasable, it will often help prevent larger problems before they occur.

Once Tindel had completed the restoration work, however, we did not feel our job was done. Although we had performed the work to order and the building was in considerably better shape, it still didn't have that fresh, newly restored look that we knew our client was looking for. The problem was that the spot brick replacement and pointing had left the building's exterior with an uneven mixture of new and old.

To solve this dilemma, there was really only one choice -- give the building a face-lift. We decided to clean and re-point the entire front elevation.

Our choice to perform this face-lift at no additional cost to the client was perceived by many as strange. By our estimation, though, there was nothing so strange about it at all. When your dealing with restoration, you simply have to give your clients what they're looking for. Aesthetics was one of the major motivations for this job in the first place. So, if aesthetics is what they wanted, aesthetics is what they had very well better get.

Edward Erhard President Tindel Waterproofing & Restoration, Inc.