A new company. Not a new tradesperson.
Gotham Access Control NY is new. The hands doing the work are not: seven-plus years of intercom, access control and camera work inside New York buildings. Here is exactly what that does and does not buy you.
The part most contractor About pages skip
Most About pages in this trade open with a founding year, a license badge, a star-rating widget and a photograph of a van. We have none of those, and inventing them would be both unlawful and the fastest possible way to lose a property manager who actually checks.
So here is the honest version. The company is new. The trade experience is not. It is seven-plus years working on entry systems, door hardware, access control and camera systems in New York buildings: walk-ups, elevator buildings, co-ops, storefronts, warehouses. That is the only tenure claim anywhere on this website, and it describes the person doing the work, not how long a business entity has existed.
A new company can still be the right choice, but you should decide that on evidence rather than adjectives. The evidence available to you is this site: whether the technical detail holds up, whether we name failure modes a salesperson would hide, and whether the written scope you get after the survey matches what we published before you ever called. If any of those three fall apart, do not hire us.
What we do
Six categories of low-voltage work, all of which regularly turn up on the same building.
- Intercom systems. We install, repair and replace legacy analog multi-tenant panels and amplifiers, two-wire bus systems, IP and PoE stations, and cloud panels. Most of the value is in knowing which of those a given riser can actually carry, and that answer comes from ringing out the pairs, not from a catalog.
- Access control. Readers, controllers and credentials on one side; electric strikes, magnetic locks, request-to-exit devices, door position switches and power supplies on the other. The second half is where jobs quietly fail, and it is the half most quotes barely mention.
- Security cameras. IP systems specified by pixel density on the target and a retention figure you can check with arithmetic, then installed, network-hardened and documented. Camera count is an output of that process, not the starting point.
- Structured cabling and low voltage. Cat6 and Cat6A, fiber backbones, riser pulls, racks and patch panels, all tested, certified and labeled at both ends, with plenum or riser-listed cable used where the space demands it rather than whatever was on the truck.
- WiFi and access points. Commercial wireless and building-wide coverage, surveyed rather than guessed, because plaster over wire lath and terra-cotta block do not attenuate like drywall and a floor plan alone will lie to you.
- Gate, parking and elevator access. Vehicle gates and garage doors with the entrapment protection UL 325 requires, and floor-by-floor elevator restriction, including bringing the car’s floor-button outputs back as inputs so the system logs which floor was actually selected.
What we do not do, and why we say it out loud
Four categories of work are permanently out of scope. None of this is modesty; each one is a separate credential, a separate trade, or both.
Fire alarm. Fire alarm installation, inspection, testing and service in New York City requires an FDNY-recognized company with a certificate-holding principal and certificate-holding technicians. We are not that company and we will not advertise as one. Where our work has to interface with a fire alarm (a magnetic lock that must release on alarm and stay released until the panel is reset, for example), we coordinate with the building’s fire alarm contractor and they terminate at their panel, not us.
Monitored burglar alarm and central-station monitoring. A separate regulated activity with its own listings and registrations. We do not sell it and we do not white-label somebody else’s.
Line-voltage electrical work. New York City exempts wiring designed to operate below 50 volts for signaling, communication, alarm and data from an electrical permit under Admin Code §28-105.4.7. But that exemption has four holes in it: life safety systems, hazardous locations, intrinsically safe systems, and any point of connection that interfaces with a control circuit switching light, heat or power. Landing a 120V feed for a lock power supply falls into the fourth. That is an electrician’s work, and we bring one in rather than pretend the exemption is wider than it is.
Locksmithing. Rekeying, cutting keys and mechanical cylinder work is a different license and a different trade. We electrify door hardware and we install strikes and maglocks; we do not run a lock shop.
What field experience actually consists of
Experience is worth something only when it is specific, so here is what it is made of.
It is knowing that a legacy New York apartment riser is normally three common #22 AWG conductors plus one selective conductor per apartment. That is why a 60-unit building has a 60-plus conductor cable in the shaft, and why “just add a station” is never just adding a station.
It is knowing that when the buzzer sounds but the door does not release, the signal path from the apartment back to the lobby is already proven good and the fault is downstream. After the obvious suspects (an open strike solenoid, a dead bell transformer, voltage drop on a long undersized run), the answer in a pre-war building is very often latch preload: the door has warped or the building has settled, the latch is loaded hard against the keeper, and the strike physically cannot swing no matter how much voltage you feed it.
It is knowing that a 125 kHz proximity fob broadcasts its facility code and card number in the clear and can be copied in roughly fifteen seconds with a thirty-dollar handheld, and that moving to 13.56 MHz is not automatically an upgrade, because MIFARE Classic and the original iCLASS scheme are both broken as well. The chip and the key management are the security claim, not the frequency.
None of that appears on a certificate. It is the difference between a quote that survives contact with the building and one that becomes three change orders.
How we price, and roughly what things cost
We survey, then we price. Publishing ranges before that is not a quote. It is so you can tell whether this conversation is worth having at all.
| Work | Typical installed range in New York | What moves the number |
|---|---|---|
| Multi-tenant intercom, 6 to 20 units | Hardware roughly $1,000 to $7,000, plus labor | Whether the existing riser has enough usable pairs, panel and directory type, and whether the entrance door, closer and strike need work too |
| Access control, per door | Roughly $2,500 to $5,000 all-in | Door and frame construction, whether power and network already reach the opening, and whether egress code forces a specific release method |
| Cameras, per camera installed | Roughly $500 to $2,500 | Cable route and length, firestopping, switch and storage headroom, mounting height and whether a lift is needed |
| Cat6 data drop | Roughly $125 to $400 each | Finished ceiling versus open, pathway availability, and drop count: twenty drops in one mobilization cost far less each than two |
| Cat6A data drop | Roughly $175 to $500 each | Same drivers, plus larger conduit fill, tighter bend radius and heavier terminations |
| Cloud video or cloud access subscription | Roughly $3 to $30 per camera or door, per month | Retention length, resolution and analytics tier. This is a permanent operating cost that outlives the install cost. Budget it as such |
Typical New York ranges for scoping conversations only, subject to survey. Nothing on this page is a quote. A number we will stand behind comes after somebody has walked the building.
What you get, in writing
Documentation is the cheapest part of the job and the first thing most contractors drop.
- A written scope before any deposit. Make and model of every device, cable type and fire listing, a door-by-door and station-by-station schedule, what we are reusing, what we are replacing, and what is explicitly excluded.
- Named unknowns with capped allowances. Where a wall genuinely cannot be seen behind until it is opened, the scope names it, puts a ceiling on it and states what triggers it, rather than leaving it to a change order you find out about on day four.
- As-built documentation and a labeling map. What went where, what it connects to, which pair is which, and which breaker or transformer feeds it. The next person in that closet should not have to start from zero.
- Admin accounts registered in your name. Cloud platforms owned by your organization with your email as owner. Every default manufacturer password is changed at commissioning and the new credentials go to you, not into our files.
- A functional test with you present. Every door released, every station called, every camera confirmed writing to the recorder, and the fire alarm release physically verified on any lock that has one, all before we ask you to sign anything off.
- Written warranty terms. Duration, parts versus labor, what is excluded, what voids it, and how to make a claim. On paper, not implied by a handshake.
Who we are not right for
Some jobs we would rather you gave to someone else. Saying so now saves us both a site visit.
- If price is the only variable. There is always a cheaper number, and in this trade it is usually cheaper because the survey did not happen, the strike is rated for about ten cycles a day on a lobby door that sees four hundred, or the cable is general-purpose PVC in a riser shaft where riser-listed cable is required.
- If you need somebody at 2 a.m. We work regular business hours, Sunday to Thursday, plus Friday morning. A building where nobody can get in goes to the front of the queue, usually same day or next business day, but during business hours. We would rather tell you that now than fail to answer a phone at midnight.
- If you want the cheapest cameras on a federally funded project. Hikvision and Dahua hardware, including the rebranded lines built on their platforms, is restricted under NDAA FY2019 §889 and named on the FCC Covered List. If your building takes federal grant money, houses a federal contractor, or expects to bid federal work, that gear is a liability and we will not specify it there.
- If you want a lock on a door that cannot legally take one. Egress rules are not negotiable by the person paying. If the answer is that the door needs a different release method, or that a maglock there is simply not permitted, that is the answer.
- If you want a system only we can administer. Proprietary credentials and contractor-owned admin accounts exist to make your next contractor be us. We specify open, non-proprietary hardware wherever it exists, and hand you the keys. If lock-in is what you were hoping to buy, we are the wrong firm.
On licenses and insurance
This site makes no license, insurance, certification, bonding or award claim anywhere, because an unverifiable claim is worth nothing and a false one in this trade is a criminal matter rather than a marketing problem.
The licensing and insurance page sets out what New York actually requires of a security installer, which license covers cameras and video intercoms, what county-level licensing applies on Long Island and in Westchester, and how to check any contractor’s number against the state’s public register in about ninety seconds. That includes ours, the day it is issued.
Common questions
You are a brand-new company. Why would a board take that risk?
Because the risk you are actually managing is not company age. It is whether the person on site understands your building. Plenty of thirty-year-old firms send a subcontracted crew who has never opened a pre-war riser, and the failure mode is identical either way: a quote written against a catalog instead of against the building.
What you can do about it is make us prove it before money moves. The site survey is free inside our service area and produces a written scope with model numbers, cable types, a door-by-door schedule and named unknowns with capped allowances. Read it against the technical pages on this site. If the two do not line up, you have learned something for free.
For a larger project, phase it. Give us one riser, one entrance or a handful of doors, see the documentation that comes back, and decide about the rest afterwards. We would rather earn a building in stages than talk a board into a lump sum on a first meeting.
Who actually turns up to do the work?
The person who walked the building and wrote the scope is the person who does the work. There is no sales representative who surveys, hands the file to a crew who has never seen the place, and disappears.
That is also the honest constraint of a small operation: capacity is finite, so we schedule around what can genuinely be delivered rather than booking a date to hold a job. If a project needs more hands than we have (a large riser replacement on a compressed schedule, for instance), we will say so and either phase it or tell you to go elsewhere.
We do not publish technician names, photographs or biographies on this site. Anyone can put a stock headshot on a web page; it proves nothing and you should be suspicious of the ones you see elsewhere.
What happens if you find something mid-job that was not in the scope?
It stops and you get told, in writing, before anything else happens. That is the whole reason the scope names unknowns up front with a capped allowance: so the predictable surprises are already priced and the genuinely unforeseen ones are obvious.
The common ones in New York are a riser whose insulation crumbles the moment it is disturbed, a door frame that turns out to be grout-filled hollow metal rather than the aluminum the drawings implied, a lock power supply feeding twice what it is rated for, and asbestos or lead protocols triggered by opening a wall in a pre-1960 building.
Where the discovery changes the price, you get a written variation with the reason, the cost and the schedule effect, and you decide. Nothing gets done first and invoiced after.
Can you send a certificate of insurance before you come to the building?
Insurance details are not published on this site, and we will not state a limit or a carrier here that we cannot evidence. That restraint is deliberate: a number typed on a website is worth nothing to a managing agent, who is going to want a current, building-specific certificate anyway.
What we can tell you is what buildings normally ask for, so you can screen any contractor properly: an ACORD 25 certificate; the owner entity, the managing agent and the board named as additional insured on both ongoing and completed operations; a waiver of subrogation; workers’ compensation and New York disability coverage; and, for larger commercial buildings, umbrella limits on top.
The licensing and insurance page explains all of that and what our own status is today.
Do you work as a subcontractor for general contractors and architects?
Yes, and it is a large part of what this work looks like in practice. On a fit-out or a gut renovation, the low-voltage package is usually the last thing anyone thinks about and the first thing that gets squeezed when the ceiling closes.
The useful time to bring us in is at rough-in, before drywall, because a conduit sleeve and a pull string cost almost nothing then and a great deal later. We will mark up drawings with device locations at code-compliant heights (operable parts between 15 and 48 inches above finished floor, door hardware between 34 and 48 inches), identify where a Class 2 circuit cannot share a pathway, and flag the doors where the locking arrangement will need to be resolved with the architect rather than at inspection.
We will also state plainly which parts of the package belong to the electrician and to the fire alarm contractor, so there is no gap in the middle that everyone assumes somebody else owns.
If we stop working with you, what happens to our system?
Nothing. That is the point of specifying open hardware and registering platforms in your name.
You keep the admin accounts, the credential database, the recordings and the documentation. Another contractor can log in, read the as-builts, follow the labeling map and pick up where we stopped without calling us for a password. Where a platform genuinely has no open equivalent, and some cloud intercoms have none, we say so before you buy it, and we explain what switching would actually cost later.
Buildings discover the alternative version of this all the time: an access system registered to a contractor they no longer use, where removing a former tenant’s fob requires a service call. That is not a technical limitation. It is a business model, and it is not ours.
Work that usually comes with this
Intercom Systems
Installation, repair and replacement of entry intercoms, from a six-unit walk-up buzzer to a 200-unit IP video system.
Access Control
Fobs, cards, keypads and phone-based credentials, plus the locking hardware and egress compliance behind them.
Property Management
Portfolio work: one vendor, consistent hardware, COIs on file, documented every time.
Co-ops & Condos
Board-vote timelines, shareholder communication, and phased work that doesn't blow the reserve fund.
Judge us on the scope, not the sales pitch.
A survey and a written scope cost you nothing inside the service area. If the document is not better than what you have been handed before, you have lost an hour.
Sun to Thu 9am to 5pm · Fri 9am to 12pm · Sat closed