Six firms bid the DDC's Prior Notice Sidewalks contract for Queens on September 23, and Vales Construction Corp. came out on top at $12,996,995.94 — a preliminary low, per DDC's own posting, not yet a confirmed award. That's about $1.7 million under the city's own engineer's estimate of $14,710,000, which is the kind of gap that gets an estimator's attention either way: either Vales read the sidewalk-repair scope tighter than the city did, or the market for this kind of prior-notice work has gotten more competitive than DDC's number assumed.
D&G Elite Construction came in second at $13,788,524.16, putting the top two within about $791,000 of each other — call it a 6.1% spread between the low and the high bid of $20,194,440.05 from Dragonetti Brothers Landscaping, Nursery & Florist. Six bids on a highways contract like this is a healthy field, and a spread that tight at the top usually means multiple firms are looking at the same quantities and landing in the same neighborhood on price — competitive, not chaotic.
Prior notice sidewalk work is what it sounds like: the city notifying property owners their sidewalks need repair, then bidding out the actual concrete and curb work under one contract. It's unglamorous, recurring city infrastructure — the kind of job that keeps a highways crew busy for a season without a ribbon-cutting at the end.
Worth flagging for anyone tracking Vales: this same firm also posted apparent low on a nearly identical Prior Notice Sidewalks contract for the Bronx, bid the very next day, at $5,900,550.30 against a $6,133,000 estimate — a tighter 6.7% spread there too. Two apparent-low finishes in two boroughs in back-to-back sessions says a firm that's actively chasing this program citywide, not just picking off one job. If DDC confirms both awards, Vales is running two sidewalk contracts at once — worth knowing if you're a sub in curb-and-sidewalk work looking for who's hiring crews this fall.