RCDolner Construction was invited to build a new corporate office for Aegis Insurance of Jersey City, N.J., after performing a successful build-out for it years ago.

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Twenty years ago, when principals Stu Koshner, Roger Chartouni and Anthony Dolce founded RCDolner Construction, their goal was to “provide personal attention and quality services to the construction community,” Koshner says. “Most construction companies provide the same basic service, but what separates one from the next is personalizing.

“The budget, the schedule and the quality of the project have to relate specifically to what the client is looking for.”

Dolce adds, “In 1987, and even today, our goal was to provide personal attention to clients. We felt that the big corporations weren’t able to provide the service that clients really deserved.”

Shortly after the three went into business, they were asked to do prebuilt office fit-outs for two separate office buildings, each 500,000 square feet. “One landlord asked us to do a prebuilt office space and it went rather well; it leased quickly,” Koshner says.

“From that point, they asked us to build all the leased space in the building. We are fortunate to do a lot of repeat business and get recommendations from owners, architects and engineers.”

The number of repeat clients the company has is an astonishing 65 percent, Chartouni adds, “considering we’ve never had a public relations division or any marketing efforts to promote the firm. Our portfolio and our daily context have been our best marketer.”

Unique Installation
Approximately eight years ago, the company performed a build-out for Aegis Insurance in Jersey City, N.J., Senior Vice President Gerald Flamio remembers. “When it came time for them to expand and relocate their corporate office, they felt they had such a great success with [us] the first go-round, they invited us back to do their new corporate office in east Rutherford, N.J., in 2006,” he says.

RCDolner built a three-floor, 90,000-square-foot installation that included executive suites, conference facilities, a café and gymnasium. “What was neat was the president wanted to have some fun with the space,” Koshner says. The project included custom millwork with contemporary uses of wood, stone, glass, metal and specialty lighting.

“We interconnected three floors with a common stair that is open, well-lit and airy, all glass and stainless steel,” Flamio explains. “It opens into big areas that invite informal conferences – be it employee-to-employee or employee-to-customer. We did a lot of neat things to make it a nice and attractive workplace.”

The New York City-based company’s portfolio also extends into the residential, hospitality, healthcare, education, entertainment and institutional realms. It has performed work on the Soho Grand Hotel, the Tribeca Grand Hotel, the Hilton New York and the Roosevelt Hotel.

“We’ve been involved in a lot of landmark hotels, as well as major renovations and ground-up projects,” Chartouni notes. “So, our involvement begins with the construction phase. If the preconstruction phase is well-thought-out and well-developed, in most cases, the projects end up being very successful. The projects where you were called in a bit late, where preconstruction has been completed or never entertained, you’ll find that those projects become more challenging.”

Metropolitan Museum of Art
In 2000, the Metropolitan Museum of Art selected RCDolner to work on a cafeteria project, and soon became one of its most loyal repeat clients. “We do a lot of gallery work,” Koshner says. “We just finished opening the Greek and Roman galleries to great applause here in the New York area.” 

For the recent project, the company removed the roof from the southeast portion of the museum, then, it added two new floors and installed a skylight over the new Roman Court. It put in Roman columns imported from France and horizontal bands of limestone cornices, as well as a new, multi-colored granite and marble floor.

RCDolner also put in new mechanical and electrical systems, which Koshner says was a challenge. “You have to reroute duct work and piping into areas where you have structural components that you have to penetrate,” he explains. “In many cases, you have to preserve similar existing architecture. When these buildings were first built, they didn’t have air conditioning. Now, the goal is to heat and air condition them using today’s technology while incorporating the components so they don’t become a detraction to the architecture.”

Koshner adds that working on a structure built in the late 1800s or early 1900s often brings surprises during the construction phase. “They may have the original architectural drawings, but so many alterations were undocumented over the years, you never know what you will find,” he says.

“When we first built the cafeteria, we were adding a new entrance to it, and we built new elevators and stairs in a vertical hoistway,” Koshner says. “While tying into existing load-bearing walls, we noticed they were hollow, so we had to come up with alternate structural attachments. We opened up the wall to see what was there, and there was an oculus that was nothing more than a round opening in the wall that had subsequently been closed up. My guess was somewhere in years past they had art displayed there.”

Today, the company is finishing up the 19th century paintings gallery and the African oceanic galleries. It is getting ready to embark on the American wing of the museum, Koshner says.

Schools Rule
One of RCDolner’s favorite education construction projects was the Kimmel Student Center at New York University four years ago. “In the middle of the center is a theater with 1,000 seats called the Skirball Center for the Performing Arts,” Koshner says. “There is a theater balcony accessible from both sides, which provides superb views of the performances from roughly 200 seats.” The company also built an orchestra pit and a tech booth with light, sound and projection capabilities.

In 2004, RCDolner completed work on the Millbank Chapel in Columbia University’s Teachers College, which was originally built in 1897 and renovated in 1960. The school called on the company to complete its third renovation. “They wanted to modernize it and preserve the integrity and detail of the original structure,” Koshner says. “They were looking to upgrade the mechanical, electrical, life safety and audio-visual systems.”

Koshner says the Millbank Chapel was originally used as a teachers’ hall. However, the company was asked to convert it into a 200-seat auditorium theater. “There was a lot of restoration and conversion of the existing historic design with millwork and ornamental plaster, wood flooring, as well as historical paintings with gold leaf stenciling,” he says. The project received the Chicago Athena Award in 2004.

Today, RCDolner is working on the Poly Prep Day School in Brooklyn, which involves expanding an existing brownstone for additional classrooms, dance and art studios and a gymnasium. The building was erected in 1890 and the objective is to “put a new, modern school adjacent to it so that it has a continuous flow,” Dolce says. “We took off the whole rear façade of this building, which required a lot of underpinning to keep it intact.

“For this façade, we’re using a rain screen, which is a new technique that I’ve never seen done in the 35 years I’ve been in the business,” he continues. “This is where Alabama limestone sits away from the structure to create a shadow. The new building is made of stone and glass, and it’s very contemporary. But, when you look at the entire structure as it relates to this gothic limestone mansion, it all comes together beautifully.” The project began in August 2006 and is expected to be completed this September.

Ozanam Hall
Another project of which the company is particularly proud is Ozanam Hall, a senior living facility in Queens, New York. “We’re redoing the mechanical systems, residence quarters, all the nursing stations throughout the building and adding a new addition onto the building itself to provide dining services for the residents at each floor,” says Project Executive Bill Cahill.

For residents who are no longer capable of traveling to the main dining hall, this will provide them an opportunity to enjoy their meals outside of their rooms and socialize with their friends.

The nine-story, 300,000-square-foot facility will consist of 432 units with 680 beds. “One thing that we’re doing is creating an overall design perspective by giving the existing building, which has more of a hospital feel, a residential feel,” Cahill says. “We want to make the residents feel at home, because it really is their home and a place where people should be able to relax. The textures are very warm and inviting. They’re taking a regular gypsum wall and adding accent millwork to warm up the place a little bit.”

As a way to mimic walking around downtown Long Island, each floor will bear the name of a road and have a specific color. This will provide both a focal point and point of reference for residents and staff, Cahill says. The roads include Williston Park, Glen Cove Road, Northern Boulevard, Jericho Turnpike, Coney Island Avenue, Inter Borough Parkway, Flushing Meadows, 5th Avenue and Town Square Road.

Ozanam Hall is owned and operated by the Carmelite Sisters, a Catholic charity. “When we met with the sisters, we knew that the only thing on their minds was the care and well-being of their residents,” Cahill notes. “We want to see that come to fruition, so we meet with them on a monthly basis [to provide] updates. Each meeting starts off with a prayer, and the prayer entails giving us the ability to provide the residents with the best care and facilities that we can provide. It’s a different perspective than what we’re used to working with, and it’s refreshing.”

The project began in February 2006 and is expected to be completed in January 2009 after 19 phases. To date, Cahill says the company has “penciled in the new beams through the existing kitchen, topped off the structure, poured the concrete and we’re about to embark on the façade work. Once we get the new structure in place, we’ll relocate the residents while we start the renovation of the different wings of the project.”

Do Not Disturb
Relocation can be a touchy subject, especially for the residents’ families, Cahill notes. “You are working in people’s homes and it’s very difficult to tell the family members of the residents that their mom or dad is going to be relocated on a temporary basis while you’re doing construction,” he says. “We have to do everything we can to keep them as comfortable as humanly possible.”

To do this, RCDolner “brought the beams in segments and we worked during off hours so as not to disturb anyone,” Cahill says. “We built ourselves enclosures to work in. To the untrained eye, it would look like a permanent structure. All the walls were painted, but they were temporary so that the residents wouldn’t get the feel that they were in a construction site.”   

He says the company has meetings every two weeks to discuss logistics and planning. “This gives the staff the ability to talk with the families of the residents,” he adds. “As long as you keep people informed the project seems to go a lot smoother. Overall, the whole [team] is very happy with the way things are going because we communicate.”

World-Class Talent
RCDolner says the sky is the limit with the amount of work in store for the company. “We think of ourselves as a specialty contractor that has to balance the amount of work we undertake to the ability of the partners and key staff,” Koshner says. 

“It’s the quality of people who are handling the account, so we will take on as many projects that we feel we have the teams to do,” Dolce adds. “We have world-class talent here that is still available on a very personal level. Many members of our staff have worked on mega projects throughout their careers. We have very deep experience and knowledge because we train from within.”

“We try to stress that our people should have the opportunity to meet with our clients, architects and engineers, which is the exact opposite of what my early training was about,” Koshner recalls. “I was kept in the back office and wasn’t allowed to go to meetings. I was told what happened afterwards.   

 “But, the world is changing,” he says. “We’ve given our people the opportunities to jump in on every phase and learn through exposure. I think our training has been enhanced dramatically by doing it that way.”

In addition, the company hires architects and engineers fresh out of college every year. “We see a lot more educated young people coming into our industry in the capacity of field management and even field supervision,” Chartouni notes. “Years ago, many field supervisors did not have college educations; they just grew through the ranks. That’s no longer the case. All of our supers are college grads, and most people in management have architectural or engineering degrees.”    

Koshner says that all three principals remain personally involved in projects and clients seem to like the idea. “My partners and I own our business outright, so we take pride in that our names are on the door and we enjoy what we do,” he says.    

“The niche we have created is that we do difficult projects,” Dolce adds. “We do projects that you have to think about. If you look at the projects that we have been working on in the last 10 years, they’ve required creative minds and people who are capable of solving problems. That’s the reason we continue to do this. It gets our juices flowing.” 

“Ten years ago I would have said I was looking forward to the day I retire,” Koshner admits. “Today, I would say the exact opposite. I’m having as much fun as I’ve ever had in my life. When you’re in the right place at the right time, and when you work on challenging and exciting projects with interesting people, it’s really a lot of fun.

“The marketplace is exceedingly busy,” he continues. “When the megafirms are doing jobs of hundreds of millions of dollars and more, and the client is looking for personal attention and they know the megafirms don’t have their A-teams available, they seem to be knocking on our door, which has been really wonderful.”