In New York City development, the general contractor relationship is one of the most consequential decisions a developer makes. The wrong choice doesn’t just affect cost — it affects quality, timeline, investor confidence, and ultimately whether a project gets delivered at all. Most developers accept this risk as a given. We decided early on to eliminate it.
Heletz Group self-performs construction across its projects. That decision didn’t come from a business plan. It came from experience.
Promark Condominiums in Crown Heights was an early and formative project — 25 stalled three-family buildings on Prospect Place and St Marks Avenue, acquired out of foreclosure, with construction already underway but far from complete. A general contractor was in place. Investors, who were still learning what the team was capable of, had insisted on it.
The GC failed. Vendors weren’t being paid. Delays mounted. The work that had been completed didn’t meet standard. Promises were made and not kept — the pattern that signals a job in serious trouble.
At that point the choice was straightforward even if the execution wasn’t: find another GC and repeat the risk, or take direct control. We took control. It was early in the company’s history, the relationships with subcontractors and vendors were deep in Brooklyn but spreading across the project required significant additional manpower and resources. It was difficult. But it worked. The project was completed, the buildings were delivered, and a capability was established that has defined how the firm operates ever since.
Self-performing construction isn’t simply replacing a GC with an in-house team. It means controlling every element of the build — the finances, the manpower, the vendors, the suppliers, the quality standards, and the efficiency of the entire operation. Nothing is intermediated. Nothing is marked up by a third party with different incentives. Every decision about how money is spent, who does the work, and what standard it meets is made directly.
The financial control alone changes the economics of a project meaningfully. GC markups on subcontractor work, change order inflation, and the misaligned incentives that come with fixed-price contracts all add cost without adding value. When the developer controls the construction budget directly, those costs don’t exist.
The quality control is equally significant. When the team building the project answers directly to the developer — not to a GC intermediary — the standard is set at the top and maintained throughout. There is no diffusion of accountability, no finger-pointing between the GC and the subcontractor when something isn’t right. The responsibility is clear and it sits where it belongs.
Since Promark, self-performed construction has been a constant across the firm’s portfolio — Vernon Tower, the Throopkin Kollection townhomes in Bedford-Stuyvesant, and others. Each project has reinforced the same conclusion: controlling construction is not just a cost advantage. It is a quality advantage, a schedule advantage, and a risk management advantage that compounds across every project in the portfolio.
The developers who control their construction process will always have a structural advantage over those who don’t. Not because GCs can’t deliver — some do, consistently — but because the developer who controls the money, the manpower, the vendors, the suppliers, the quality, and the efficiency controls the outcome. In a business where outcomes are everything, that matters.