The first years in business are notoriously challenging for a new company as it establishes itself from stranger to player in an unfamiliar market. The phrase only the strong survive comes to mind, and it is often within those formative years that a company’s strength is measured and its capability to survive decided. When LLNY Group started in 2017 it came on strong from the get-go, finding opportunity in storage buildings and commercial space projects for which it provided construction management services. “We wanted to hit the ground running and get things moving as quickly as possible,” says Owner of LLNY Group, Yosi Lecce. Those early days saw LLNY secure notable commercial projects in the New York tri-state area, hitting thousands of square feet and multi-million budgets. As intended, the company was off to a strong start.
LLNY Group quickly established itself as one of the top commercial construction companies in the New York tri-state area. Powered by a small but powerful team, LLNY provides full construction management services within the commercial sector and more recently, after a clever move towards opportunity, the residential sector too. Whether it’s guiding you through the preconstruction planning stage, handling negotiations and monitoring budgets as an experienced owner’s representative, or taking the lead on every aspect of construction management, LLNY ensures seamless execution from concept to completion.
When things took a turn in 2020 in the form of a worldwide pandemic, LLNY was still a relatively new company. “We were in the middle of a big storage building project at the time,” says Yosi, “But we pivoted and we managed to get some good clients that helped carry us through to where we are today. We’ve got a very small team and we try to keep it very nimble, very light, so that we’re more agile as we move in this changing market. This has really helped us pivot and move around as the industry and the economic climate changes. We’re not as locked down as some of the bigger companies are, and this allows us to move with the changes a little bit more, which has helped us greatly.”
“We’re not as locked down as some of the bigger companies are, and this allows us to move with the changes a little bit more, which has helped us greatly.”
LLNY have become masters of the market pivot, young and nimble enough to move towards new opportunities presented by unexpected challenge. This is true of LLNY’s recent move into the residential sector where there’s opportunity in low-income housing, affordable units, and regular-rate residential housing. Marion Ave, for example, is a 4-storey residential project in the Bronx for which LLNY Group acted as General Contractor. “That was an existing two-story building that was demolished, so it’s an alteration basically, but it’s essentially new construction. We built two four-story buildings with a joining party wall between each, plus a penthouse on the roof. There’s 10 units in each building, and this is primarily a low income, affordable housing build out. The finishes are a little nicer than what you’d typically find in affordable housing units offered in the Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens, or in the boroughs for that matter. We use nicer tile, porcelain, appliances and kitchens, and the developers care about their own product which unfortunately is not the norm in the affordable housing sector these days.”
LLNY Group applies a whole lifecycle approach to its residential developments, prioritizing robust finishes and ease of future maintenance. This is a favorable approach for both tenant and developer, both of whom are in these buildings for the long haul. “We try to really make these units as nice and as robust as possible to limit the tenant turnover for them and try to make maintenance as simple as possible. Once these guys build, they hold these buildings, so we try to really keep in mind how we can make maintenance carefree, worry-free and as easy as possible without impacting the tenant. Getting into the ground floor of that design process really helps us do that for them.”
What LLNY lacks in age, it makes up for in agility. Being a relatively young company, LLNY Group is well-positioned to embrace new software and techniques as they become available, without having to undergo a lengthy, costly and often disruptive transformation to bring them up to speed. Such software and techniques allow LLNY Group to approach projects with an innovative and problem-solving mindset, which sets it apart from its older competitors. “We’re constantly trying to implement new software, whether it’s field reporting, tracking material logs, or any kind of CRM, to help the process move along in a more streamlined way. This has helped us partner with some older guys that have been in the industry for much longer and that don’t really know the new systems that are in place these days. These partnerships have helped us get in front of some projects that we might not otherwise be able to get involved with, which has been nice.”
LLNY recognizes the importance of meticulous planning, budget management, and open communication in delivering successful construction projects, and that is exactly what clients can expect from the LLNY team. Budget management in particular is proving an affluent avenue for LLNY Group, lending to the fact that, as Yosi puts it, cash is king right now. “We work with developers now on some residential build outs, so we’re understanding the soft cost portion of the build out. We understand what the bank is looking for, how the funding works, and we can really help hold their hand in the pre-construction process, getting engineers and architects on board and fine tuning the design before we even put a shovel in the ground, value engineering their designs before we start construction. And we also know what the bank is going to want to see, so we know where we need to be in construction and what needs to get done first, and how these bank draws work. A really big aspect of what we do is keeping these projects moving with the proper cash flow and not getting caught behind.”
A recent project that captures the nature of LLNY’s diversified service offerings and its recent pivot into the residential sector is 3612 Bronx Blvd, a new construction residential development in the Bronx. “That’s a 16-unit building and probably one of the higher end buildings in this specific developer’s portfolio,” Yosi says. “Nice big windows right across from the park, nice big backyard space, tall ceilings. We built this thing from the ground up using Concrete Masonry Unit (CMU) construction with C joist and structural steel component. That one should be getting TCO soon, so hopefully they start leasing this thing up, get some tenants in, and then we move on to the next one.”
Still, it is the commercial sector that forms the bulk of LLNY’s portfolio, diversified in itself with unique storage, transit, and office build out projects. “Another big project we completed a couple years ago was a 50,000 square foot storage building in Hell’s Kitchen,” says Yosi, speaking of an eight-storey storage building in the heart of the neighborhood with a budget of €14,000,000. Completed in LLNY’s earlier years, this project demonstrates the company’s eagerness to hit the ground running during a time when the market was new and challenging. The result is an impressive, fit-for-purpose storage building that became exemplar of the scale and complexity that LLNY was capable of delivering, and that in fact it went on to deliver in the years that followed.
“We’re still grabbing projects and doing work as per normal,” Yosi says of LLNY’s vision for the future, “but we’re also looking to branch out into the public sector and start bidding on some public work, which will help us pivot as the market changes. We want to be diversified between public and private so that if one sector goes up or down, we can have a head start on the other side. We’re really looking to get into a development of our own. We’ve been boots on the ground looking for properties, and we’re getting close to hopefully signing up a deal or two and starting to develop for ourselves, so we have the teams in place as far as architects and engineers. We’re builders ourselves, so we understand the process and this puts us in a very good position to start doing our own developments.”
LLNY is well positioned to maintain its current streams of work while, light and nimble on its collective feet, on the lookout for new ones. In an approach that has become woven into the young company’s fabric, LLNY will remain strong, focused, and agile as it lets opportunity guide the way forward to a place where no project is too challenging, no budget too tight, and no vision too bold. In this spirit, and for many years to come, LLNY Group is raising the bar for commercial construction and cementing the future of New York City.
