“I’ve always liked building things, and I always liked figuring out how things go together when I was a kid,” said Joe Scarinci, a Mahopac, N.Y., native who started working at a nearby architecture firm, Fuller and D’Angelo Architects, when he was in high school. By the time he finished his bachelor’s in architecture at the New York Institute of Technology, he was working 30 hours a week at the Elmsford, N.Y.-based firm, surveying, drafting and managing smaller projects. He worked on a ground-up specialty high school for architecture and engineering in Stamford, Conn., and on the renovation of Stamford’s Old Town Hall. His father was an electrician who owned his own company and mostly did small residential jobs. The trade “never paid well and was never fun when it was over 100 degrees,” said Scarinci, who initially followed his father into construction by working as a carpenter in his teens and early 20s. 

MKDA specializes in corporate interiors for offices, hotels and hospitals. That means Scarinci works on 30 or 40 jobs in the course of six months, rather than spending years on a single project. He said that he appreciates the pace, because he ends up doing something different every day. His job involves managing interiors for several commercial landlords including The Durst Organization, Boston Properties and Vornado Realty Trust. Recently, he completed office buildouts for financial tech firm SS&C Technologies at Durst’s 151 West 42nd Street and for Starwood Realty Trust at Fisher Brothers’ 605 Third Avenue. His team is also renovating the lobby at 299 Park Avenue, another Fisher property, together with Rockwell Group.

Source: Commercial Observer