Paving the Apartment Parking Lot

The parking lot at our apartment complex in Albany has not been repaired in the 40 years it’s been here. Nothing was done in half a decade! In that time, New York’s awful weather has done some damage. The ground underneath the pavement has shifted in some spots, there are 27 potholes of varying sizes, and there are pavement cracks a person could fall into. Aside from being a massive eyesore, it’s also a safety hazard. What if someone steps in a crack or trips over the broken asphalt and breaks an ankle. I spoke to the landlord about residential driveway paving in the Albany area yesterday and he started calling local contractors to get quotes. A few of the paving companies only offered blacktop resurfacing, which I though was odd. Blacktop pavement is usually only at schools and churches. Anyways, the cheapest quote we got after calling 17 companies was $7,000. That’s a lot of money, but I suppose it’s not terrible for a huge parking lot that can probably fit 40 cars. Actually, I’m almost positive that price is a steal. Some of the driveways that were paved in my parent’s residential neighborhood were $8,000 – $10,000 each. I get that larger homes have bigger driveways which causes the price to go up, but I still think anything near $10,000 is absurd.

The Albany paving contractor we hired was none other than Perfect Pave, that company that’s always in the news for donating to charity and sponsoring events downtown. I know they have done thousands of driveway in the Capital District because their name is all over the place. I’ve seen it on billboards, heard it on the radio, saw them at Equinox last year handing out food, the list goes on. That’s the first one that came to mind for us, and we figured why not? So, they came over, paved the entire apartment complex parking lot in 3 hours and went on their way. The place looks nice now and I do love that feel of fresh asphalt.