Levine Builders

Levine Builders is a New York general contractor and construction manager, and the construction arm of the Douglaston group of companies. The firm builds multifamily housing, affordable and supportive housing, healthcare and institutional projects across the five boroughs, working both for affiliated developers and for outside clients. Being paired with a developer under common ownership gives it unusually early involvement in design and budgeting, which matters on subsidized housing where the capital stack has to be fixed long before construction documents are complete. Levine holds the contract on Sparrow Square Phase I in East Flatbush, two 10-story buildings totaling 262 units, 117 of them designated supportive housing, targeted for completion in early 2029.

The firm started with two people. Jeffrey Levine founded Levine Builders in 1979 after studying architecture at night and working construction sites during the day, and the company has since grown past 200 employees while keeping its office in Douglaston, Queens, at 42-09 235th Street.

Its first decade was spent on the South Bronx. Working alongside the New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development and the city’s Vacant Building Program, Levine rehabilitated burned-out shells into roughly 600 units of affordable housing between 1979 and 1986, and built about 230 homes through the NYC Housing Partnership’s New Homes Program. Later work broadened the type list considerably: the Porter Avenue homeless shelter in Brooklyn, the Union Plaza nursing home, Atria senior residences at Kew Gardens and Riverdale, School of Visual Arts dormitories in Manhattan, and APEX housing on Long Island. In 2001 the group delivered The Renaissance on 116th Street, the city’s first large-scale low-equity co-op. Levine was also part of creating the Gansevoort Hotel in 2004, and in 2005 restored the facade of the landmarked 90 West Street after falling World Trade Center debris damaged it, converting the office building to housing.

How the work is organized

Preconstruction is treated as three distinct exercises. Pre-planning covers site conditions, zoning analysis and a site logistics plan including safety engineering requirements. Documentation reporting takes architect and engineer drawings through design approval and turns them into estimates, budgets and a completion schedule. Value engineering weighs alternate systems, methods and materials against the design intent.

On site, the firm can sit either as construction manager with a Guaranteed Maximum Price option or as general contractor under a fixed-price agreement. From mobilization through certificate of occupancy it handles procurement and bid review, weekly check-ins with architects and consultants, monthly lender requisitions, change order management and field safety training, closing with punch list commissioning and turnover of warranties, guarantees and as-built plans.

The stated mission is narrower than the project list suggests: revitalize neighborhoods one building, one block or one community at a time, partnering with local labor vendors and job training programs.