A dozen contractors bid the exterior restoration of the Onderdonk House in Ridgewood, Queens, and DRL Services LLC came in lowest at $1,219,390. The Department of Design and Construction's project PV656-EXT (EPIN 85026B0059), labeled a GRHS project in the solicitation, sits at 18-20 Flushing Avenue in Queens Community Board 5. Bids closed Feb. 4.
This is preservation work on an old stone house, and DDC's scope reads like it. Three parts: restore the envelope, including restoring and replacing clapboards on the addition, the windows and their wood trim on both the main house and the addition, and pointing and structural restoration of the main house's stone walls; rebuild the landscape right around the house to fix drainage and water getting in; and restore the wood plank floor on the first floor of the main house. The contract carries special experience requirements and community hiring requirements.
The field, low to high: DRL Services LLC $1,219,390.00; ABCD Construction Corp. $1,346,385.00; Jobco Incorporated $1,381,433.00; The Urban Group Ltd. $1,554,091.00; Antonio Natale Landscaping Inc. $1,820,000.00; Lanmark Group Inc. $1,988,344.00; Padilla Construction Services Inc. $1,989,140.87; Sandhu Contracting Inc. $1,997,885.00; Neelam Construction Corp. $1,999,999.00; XBR Inc. $2,300,000.00; N.S.P. Enterprises Inc. $2,741,000.00; AAH Construction Corp. $3,568,720.00.
DRL beat ABCD by $126,995, or 10.4%. The top three sit within $162,043 of each other, then there is a jump. Four bids clustered between $1,988,344 and $1,999,999, a $11,655 band. The median is $1,988,742.44, and the high bid is 192.7% above the low. No engineer's estimate appears in the public bid record.
An apparent low is not an award. DDC reviews the low bidder before it publishes the award in City Record. The job is on our board as RFI-000813.
Why this matters. Small historic jobs draw big fields, and big fields produce wide spreads. Pointing and structural repair on historic stone, custom clapboard and wood window restoration are specialty trades, and the gap between the low three and the $2 million cluster is the gap between firms that priced this as preservation work and firms that priced it as general construction.
What to do next. Masonry restoration, millwork and window restoration, carpentry, and landscape and drainage subs should price to DRL Services. Watch City Record for the award.
Update, Sept. 28, 2026: City Record published DDC's award of the Onderdonk House envelope restoration to DRL Services LLC for $1,219,390 on May 6, 2026.