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NYC’s Top Real Estate Disaster Service Is Flexing New Muscle

Maxons Restorations merges with massive North American Mitigation and Reconstruction Company

Here’s some welcome news for uncertain times: New York City’s top real estate restoration, mitigation and reconstruction service now has powerful new resources for building owners and property managers. 

Maxons Restorations – known for rescuing Tri-state landlords from fire, water, mold and smoke damage – is now operating nationwide, following an acquisition from First Onsite, one of North America’s largest and most experienced property restoration company. 

“I started with Maxons Restorations in 1994, not long after it was founded,” Jeffery Gross — the company’s Chief Operating Officer, who has now joined First Onsite — told The Real Deal. “Over the last 27 years, the company has continued to grow and expand. Now, our reach is the whole country and beyond. That’s the exciting stuff.”

Maxons oversees over 1,000 clean up jobs each year in NYC. But the company cut its teeth, Gross added, on some of the most intensive restoration operations ever seen in the history of New York. After the September 11th World Trade Center attacks, Maxons was tapped to service roughly 3,000 apartment residences, 50 office towers and even historic landmarks like St. Paul’s Chapel and Trinity Church. Following Hurricane Sandy, the team helped to rescue the Tri-state area and surrounding cities affected. 

They have also worked on dozens of iconic skyscrapers, including the Empire State Building, Penn Plaza and several popular stadiums and arenas. 

“We worked on the construction of a large sports arena in the city and they were scrambling to try to get it ready for the season but there were major moisture issues,” Gross recalled. “We got some very large desiccant dehumidification equipment running to stabilize the environment to allow for around the clock construction to help get that project finished ahead of schedule. It’s about trying to help people keep to a deadline smack in the middle of the summer while dealing with unpredictable rainstorms, heat, and humidity.”

But even in the absence of storms and “Acts of God”, Gross said business is extremely consistent — there is always something happening somewhere in a city like New York.  

“There are day to day disasters like fires, pipe breaks, dust damage from exterior work, construction accidents, in building types as varied as residential, retail, offices and hospitals,” Gross said. “You know, when you’re in a city of 10 million people, things tend to happen every single day.”

That’s why it made so much sense to combine the two companies to expand a larger outreach, he added.

First Onsite originated through the unification of seven regional property restoration services spanning from Maryland to Hawaii. The company now boasts over 80 branches with more than 2,200 employees. But with the addition of Maxons, which had operated with a staff of just 30 employees, to the First Onsite umbrella, New York property owners now have an unparalleled resource to take on even the most unexpected and labor-intensive clean-ups. 

“We are expanding rapidly in major urban areas like New York, Miami and California,” said Jeff Johnson, CEO of First Onsite. “We’re making a heavy investment in new technologies and data science that the industry hasn’t seen before. We can now better serve our clients and get them back up and running as quickly and safely as possible.”

But it isn’t just fancy tech that’s now available to New York buildings in need. It’s “people power”, Johnson said.  

“We have a really strong culture,” said Johnson. “We are heavily focused on maintaining a good amount of diversity, and we’re all about inclusion. That is probably one of the most important factors for our team.”

Johnson added that because no two disasters are the same, getting the job done is all about access to the right resources and to the qualified professionals you can collaborate with to solve complex problems.

“We’re now a part of a bigger company, but we’re still local,” said Gross. “We’re still right here in the heart of New York City. And, you know, developing local relationships in cities around the globe, and being able to mobilize anywhere when needed, gives us the best of both worlds. When you’re a small company like we were, you can only help so many people. With First Onsite, we have the opportunity and the ability now to really step up and help our clients when they need it.”

If you’d like to learn more about First Onsite and how their team can help with preventive and emergency responses, check out their website for more information and to connect with their team of professionals. https://firstonsite.com/industries/commercial-property/