‘Quality Given, Integrity Driven’
For five brothers at the helm of Cow Bay Contracting, excellence and family are everything
There are family businesses and then there’s the third-generation kind of business that the D’Alonzo brothers—all five of them—operate.
With 11 families that have at least two relatives working for the Port Washington, New York, general contracting firm, Cow Bay Contracting is truly a family affair. “We are big into families—our own and our employees,” says Joseph D’Alonzo, the company’s President. “We didn’t set out to foster such a family-oriented business; it just happened very organically.”
The contractor has 50 full-time employees and so many related co-workers—including, for example, a man who works as a carpenter and his daughter, a project manager—that you don’t have to search too hard to see family dynamics in action.
Family First
Joseph says one of the reasons the situation works so well for the D’Alonzo brothers, and all the other non-D’Alonzo family pairings, is because his father created a culture that puts relationships first.
“Our father’s priority was to do what was best for family, not for business,” he says. When he and his brothers took over Cow Bay Contracting, they adopted that philosophy and brought in an outside business consultant to help establish clear processes and roles to proactively head off any conflict.
Today, in addition to Joseph’s role as President; his twin brother, Augie, is Vice President, oldest brother Dominick oversees quality control, Brian heads up the landscape aspect of the business, and Mark leads the snow removal operation and irrigation division.
“When it works, working with your brothers is the greatest business in the world, and when things are off, it can be a little bit of a grind. But overall, we are very blessed to get to do this together,” Joseph says.
And though the next generation of D’Alonzos hasn’t yet committed to pursuing a leadership role at the family business, its fingerprints are all over. They’ve served in seasonal roles and designed software that Cow Bay uses every day to help monitor and keep track of employees as they move between job sites and locations.
“We spent four or five years trying to find some sort of software that would help track our workers’ whereabouts,” Joseph says. “One summer, I gave my daughter the task of trying to find the right software, thinking it would take all summer to do. But she had designed it and finished it by lunch on Day One.”
The system, he says, helps free up management resources and established a process that makes it easier for clients to know that the Cow Bay crew has been on site to complete tasks.
Committed to Excellence
For decades, Cow Bay has been committed to providing outstanding service in evolving categories, including sprinklers and irrigation; landscape construction; masonry; asphalt paving; commercial remodeling; Americans with Disabilities Act compliance; commercial facility management; and general commercial construction including construction management.
“We are proud to say that Cow Bay is the general contractor for specific needs,” Joseph says. “When it comes to the clients and projects we take on, we’re like a Swiss Army knife, which has allowed us to survive.”
The Long Island-based company has taken on projects throughout the state of New York and from Maine to Virginia, serving a range of clients that include Wendy’s, TD Bank, KFC, Brooklyn’s Pratt Institute, Sherwin-Williams, AutoZone, Mavis Discount Tire, ExxonMobil, the U.S Postal Service, and the New York City Department of Parks & Recreation.
Through it all, the D’Alonzos have made it their mission to offer quality, service and dependability throughout the Northeast during all phases of construction, from groundbreaking to project delivery and maintenance. At the core of Cow Bay Contracting is its commitment to excellence. The focus on doing right by the project and by the customer has resulted in many return customers.
“We stand behind our values,” the D’Alonzos say. “We mean what we say: ‘Quality given, integrity driven.’ ”
While the company works throughout the Northeast, the owners are engaged in all of Cow Bay’s projects to “keep our fingers on the pulse and to know that our philosophy and values are implemented,” Joseph says.
“If we are doing the right job, the business will take care of the rest,” he says. “Our values permeate throughout our business model. We are blessed to be able to build people’s dreams and their businesses. We are so very fortunate.”
Finding New Opportunities
While the guiding principles remain, the company, which also maintains a satellite office in Newark, New Jersey, at times has pivoted to provide additional services in order to survive and thrive in light of family changes, economic circumstances and the coronavirus pandemic.
What began as a landscaping, irrigation and snow removal company grew into a residential construction enterprise. “Dad expanded into kitchens and baths in the ’70s, because he had five mouths to feed,” Joseph says.
Once the brothers began working full time, they were expected to bring in business of their own. When they began landing commercial customers and realized how much quicker and more efficiently they could complete commercial work, the focus shifted. Today, Cow Bay Contracting takes on only commercial clients; its only residential work is for multiunit projects.
Its recent projects include building apartments in Brooklyn as well as the Bronx; overseeing the transformation of a Jesuit seminary in Mohegan Lake, New York, into Shrub Oak International School, a day and boarding school for students 8 to 30 years old on the autism spectrum; and guiding the construction of a synagogue in Scarsdale, New York, as well as a church with modular construction in Long Island’s Garden City.
“We aim to be a partner with our clients and build a better mousetrap for their projects, to get more involved in the beginning of the project to make sure it all goes as smoothly as it can,” Joseph says.
The coronavirus pandemic has helped showcase Cow Bay Contracting’s strength and ability to deliver. “COVID-19 has thinned the herd of people who thought they could do projects but were really just overselling their abilities,” Joseph says. “The foundation of our business is the commitment to excellence in every project undertaken.”
Throughout the pandemic, there was somewhat of a shift with the projects the company was taking on. It relied more on the service and maintenance aspects of its business, including snow removal and cleaning.
“We tapped into more of the contracting in order to keep people working,” Joseph says.
For example, throughout the past year, Cow Bay Contracting teams have been busy removing snow and ice on the 88 miles of non-aeronautical roadways at John F. Kennedy International Airport and cleaning 14 hospitals in four boroughs for NYC Health + Hospitals.
“We work, we get paid; we don’t work, we don’t get paid,” Joseph says. “And we especially like it when we get to work with clients who, like us, are in the business of getting things done.”