A LANDSCAPING, MASONRY, AND CONSTRUCTION FIRM BREAKS GROUND ON INNOVATIVE PROJECTS ACROSS NEW YORK AND NEW JERSEY BY ERIK SCHONING PHOTOS BY ALEX BARRETO

Mike Izzo’s first masonry project was a brick mailbox he built for his mother. The year was 1998, and for work, Izzo was cutting lawns. (“I wasn’t very good at it,” Izzo said with a laugh.) So when his mother asked for a new mailbox, Izzo happily took on the project. Today, over 25 years later, Izzo’s business, Rock Solid Landscape & Masonry Design, is thriving, and Izzo’s mother still collects her mail from that very same brick mailbox.

Izzo now helms three companies: Rock Solid Landscape & Masonry Design, Rock Solid Development, and Trinity Construction Group. Together, the three businesses span the entirety of the custom-building process, from development, design, and construction all the way through the finishing touches on even the most complicated of projects. And since the bulk of Izzo’s projects are high-end and custom, things do tend to get complicated. But that’s precisely what makes it fun.

“For us, it’s seven days a week,” Izzo said. “We’re putting in long hours to make sure everybody’s doing the right job. We control the job, we stand behind our product, and we like to bring what’s trending to the forefront.” Izzo is never content to sit on his laurels; Rock Solid is always abreast of the latest and greatest in masonry and landscaping. For example, natural stone veneers are all the rage these days, thin sheets of limestone that are mounted to honeycomb boards, providing all the elegance of stone construction without the headache. He’s also skilled in cantilevered roofs, floating roofs for pool houses that are attached only on one side, giving the construction an open, expansive feel. By the time a trendy new product hits the main stream, Izzo and his team are already well-schooled in both material and design, ready to deliver it with flawless execution.

Because all three of Izzo’s businesses work in tandem, he’s able to oversee a project from its inception. When a new client walks through the door, they sit down together to hammer out exactly how they envision the end result. “We always try to start off with a rendering,” Izzo said. “Some customers have a vision but don’t know how to lay it out. Others are adamant on where they want things. In any case, we take the client’s vision and bring it to life on paper first so there are no surprises or costly mistakes on the job site.”

From there, Izzo taps his crews. Over the years, he’s brought on employees from all walks of construction and design, so that today Rock Solid boasts an A-team of specialists across every trade. “We have finish carpenters that work for us full time, framing carpenters, masons, landscapers, people who install sheetrock, insulation, low-voltage lighting, and more,” Izzo said. “In all these aspects, we control the tempo of the job. We don’t have to wait on other contractors. We get the work done very quickly.”

That breadth of expertise also extends to the types of projects Izzo’s teams undertake. With a client base that extends across south and western New Jersey and up into Staten Island, Brooklyn, and Manhattan, there is no commercial or residential project he hasn’t undertaken, whether redoing a roof terrace on a high-end townhome in Chelsea or the pool of a sprawling estate in Harding Township. His commercial portfolio includes a roster of big-name clients, including Harley-Davidson and French wallpaper purveyors de Gournay. Then there’s his long-standing relationship with a professional New York football team, which has spanned the last 15 years. In preparation for the 2025 season, Izzo and his team revamped the team’s locker room, redoing the barbershop, sauna, and sound system.

No matter the job, Izzo prides himself on work that is anything but ordinary. His relationships with clients are built precisely on this idea, the belief that worthwhile design and construction requires investment in the highest-quality materials and the most innovative of executions. “The last thing I want to do is what I call ‘me too’ jobs,” Izzo said. “That’s where you walk into somebody’s house and they say, ‘Oh, I have a fire pit just like that.’ And everyone else says, ‘Me too!’ That’s just the same old boring stuff, and we don’t want to do it.”

A business that began with a humble mailbox is now an expansive enterprise, covering two states and a countless number of residential and commercial clients. The beauty of construction, masonry, and landscaping is that if you do good work, it speaks for itself. Testaments to the quality of Izzo’s work are sprinkled all over New York and New Jersey, and as his mother can testify, when Rock Solid builds something, it lasts. After all, it’s in the name.

Rock Solid Masonry and Landscape Design

516 Industrial Loop, Staten Island / 718.967.2222 / rocksolidyards.com