Siding Project: Cladding a 36-Building Condo on the Water

The End of Vinyl

While the product has been available for a few years, Popeck notes, "They're still facing new scenarios and this is a benchmark product on a number of fronts. It's kind of a learning curve."

The condo certainly needed help: The 14-year-old complex had been covered in brick and traditional vinyl siding and both had deteriorated badly."The property is right on the water overlooking Manhattan, so there were problems," says Popeck, the engineer for the project. "We basically have to tear everything down and start from scratch."The five-member board was  intrigued by what it heard about Celect. "The salespeople for this particular product had been trying to break into the market, and putting out sales pitches to engineering firms that deal with large communities," says board president Linda Kobetitsch. "We could have chosen vinyl siding or cement, but we chose this product."

"Celection" Process

Because of the novelty of the product, Celect helped out in the early stages of installation. "We put the project out to bid to five different contractors, and none of them had worked with this material before," Kobetitsch says. "We chose National Contractors, and they took a one-day seminar on how to install the product. Then installation experts from Celect came to oversee the work for the first week and answer any questions.

"The scale and variety of buildings in the condo association should make for a fruitful testing ground as work continues. Explains Popeck, "It's not just 36 buildings of the same type, but multiple different building types and styles. The contractors and us — as far as we're concerned as designers and managers — keep coming to different scenarios and scratching our heads for a little while. You'll work with 10 buildings of one style and eight of another, so it's a process."

Siding work started in June, and Popeck estimates that the work is a little bit over a third done. The project is expected to be complete in December, at a cost of $4.2 million, paid from funds sourced by transition litigation. 

Project Start Date: June 2014
Estimated End Date: December 2014

PROJECT 

● Replace vinyl siding across 36 buildings 

BUDGET

$4.2 million 

PARTICIPANTS

Linda Kobetitsch, board president

Michael Popeck, senior project manager, The Falcon Group

National Contractors 

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Photo by Jason Carpenter. Click to enlarge.