When Patching Stops Keeping Up

How a Long Island property manager got her 450-apartment community onto a three-year repaving plan, worked within her budget, and made the owner and residents happy.

Brandon Noel·Oct. 28, 2026

A walk with the owner

The property owner’s visit finally fell on a nice day.

“We joke that usually it’s raining when he comes,” said Jacquie, the property manager at a 450-apartment rental community in Coram, Long Island. With the weather on their side, she and her team walked him through the parking lots.

The goal was simple: small scale, bandaid patches were no longer keeping up with the overall condition of the parking lot, and Jacquie knew it was long past time to redo it.

In her words, “We were like, ‘You see that? You see this? You see that? You see this?’ We made him walk everywhere and pointed out the Swiss cheese potholes along the way.” And she believes that walk made all the difference. But there was just one problem: Jacquie knew her annual budget still couldn’t accomplish all that needed done, even with the owner’s approval.

Additionally, the thought of having to break up the much-needed work across multiple years, repeating the contracting process, was not appealing. The solution for Jacquie came in the form of a unique three-year structured plan to repave a community for the first time since it was originally constructed twenty years ago. Three years of work, one contract, and fewer headaches.

A job in the middle

Jacquie has held most of the jobs in a leasing office, from marketing to running the property. “Project managers are kind of like jack-of-all-trades,” she said. She drafts vendor contracts, collects bids, handles the billing and financial reports, and hears from residents when they have issues.

Day-to-day maintenance belongs to Don, the community’s longtime maintenance supervisor, and the two of them coordinate on the big projects.

She described site staff as sitting in “this interesting middleman position” between residents, the management company, and ownership:

“And you’re kind of in between all three of those, and you need to figure out how to balance [it all].”

JACQUIE, PROPERTY MANAGER

What all three had in common was the condition of the parking lots, and Royal Pavement Solutions (RPS) maintained them on-and-off for years. However, as time went by, the spot patching wasn’t keeping up. In 2021, when RPS came back to do more patch work, Peter Pappas, RPS vice president, felt responsible to explain why things were getting worse.

For the first few years, the spot repair proposals were all that got approved, but he continued to present the more foundational, long-term repairs.

The winter that changed the conversation

As time went on, Peter said he could count on a call from Don every spring, once winter had done its damage. Then, just before the winter of 2026, when he walked the property, his estimate just to fix the potholes came to almost three years of what the community normally spent on maintenance.

Peter remembers their reaction, “That’s like three years of maintenance right there and we’re not getting anything done.”

Don and Jacquie decided, maybe it was time. They pushed to repave the whole property instead.

In April 2026, Peter got the call: Ownership was considering repaving the whole property. Peter updated the budget proposal from the year before. The new plan would fix their underlying pavement issues with a brand new parking lot surface. There was just one remaining problem: their annual budget.

That was when Peter, Don, and Jacquie worked together on a unique contract set-up that allowed them to stay within their annual budget, while also getting the comprehensive repairs, without having to restart the process each year. Just like projects have phases, this was a form of contractual phasing.

Days later, the contract was signed. And she explained that while this type of plan may not work for everyone, it was worth presenting to the owner, but didn’t claim to know any secret formula to get approval.

“You kind of learn their personality and how to present things to them,” she said. “Because some owners will be like, ‘Yeah, go for it. Do it.’ And others will want a lot more data. I’ve been on both sides of the fence.”

She recounted doing the data-heavy version before, when the community redid its gym years earlier.

“I think I had a total of like 12-to-16 bids for the gym,” along with a spreadsheet pricing each type of equipment.

While the walk through the parking lot is what convinced this owner, timing was a factor as well.

“I think in general from like August to October is when most people are doing their budget for the next year. And I know most sites run on a January to December fiscal year.” Year one came together outside that cycle, in the spring after the bad winter.

Getting the project started

The three-year plan was designed to focus on the worst areas first. RPS divided the property’s square footage across each phase including the driveways, shared parking areas, and shared roads inside them.

Contract phasing isn’t the answer for every property. For instance, the same owner at a different location chose to repave that property all at once, which Jacquie referred to as, “A different style of property in a different market.”

• 2026, year one
• 2027
• 2028

During the job, crews found a sinkhole. It was repaired while they were on site, and the paving kept going. Asked how it was handled, Jacquie said, “It was good. We [weren’t] going to pause the entire project to fix something that obviously needs to be done one way or the other.”

The hardest part: people’s homes

RPS held its own pre-construction meeting with Don, Jacquie and their staff to walk through the plan. For Jacquie, the hardest part wasn’t the actual work itself, it was balancing everything and everyone else on her end. “It’s not so much managing vendors or contractors in that situation.” What takes the most work, she said, is, “Managing the residents, their expectations, and communicating with them.”

For instance, some residents lost the parking outside their apartments while their section was being repaved. Jacquie was direct with them about it.

“I know it’s really inconvenient to not be able to park outside their apartment for a few days, but let’s get real. They’d seen the condition of the parking lot,” She said, knowing the other side, too. “And I tell people I live in an apartment, too. I get it.”

Her office leaned toward what she first called an, “Obnoxious amount of communication.” With more than 900 residents, phone calls aren’t realistic. In her words, “It is unrealistic to try and call over 900 people.” So, the notices went out in writing, multiple times, as well as digital notices.

“It was taped to your front door at least two to three times.”

JACQUIE, ON HER NOTICE ROUTINE

Of course, no matter how many notices go up, there will always be some who, for one reason or another, don’t pay attention. They take the form of cars still on the parking lot the morning crews arrive.

How the three-year contract works in reality

Jacquie really liked the way this plan offered a set structure. “I think the pros is from like a budgeting standpoint, obviously, you know what you’re spending for the next three years and it makes it a lot easier.”

It also cut down on a large portion of the redundant paperwork.

“I don’t mind longer term contracts because then you don’t have to worry about drafting a new one every single year.”

She had a warning, too, for anyone signing one or interested in structuring their maintenance in this way. She said the biggest risk is forgetting about things on your end. Even with a trusted contractor, like RPS, you want to have good record keeping and, as always, keep communicating.

Her advice holds for any project with RPS, start to finish: “don’t be afraid to ask questions,” and “send the extra email.”

With Royal, she said, “We have never really had any issues with communication with Peter or anybody. He knows us as a client and what we need and what our owner wants.”

Residents noticed the difference. “[Our] people were very happy once it was done,” Jacquie says, and some told her, “Oh, it’s great. I love this new pavement.”