Kadampa Meditation Center New York

Video Interview with Amy Schwarz, Administrative Director and Erica Sheerin, Deputy Admin Director,  Kadampa Meditation Center New York.

Edited transcript of video:

“Kadampa Meditation Center is part of the new Kadampa tradition of Buddhism. We are actually the national center for Kadam Dharma in the United States. We function as a retreat center and people from all over the United States and the world come here to do retreats, to take classes, and learn how to meditate.

The original property had some smaller houses to house people. But we were always running out of space to house people. This new building added 15 private rooms as well as a dining room that can accommodate 140. It has made a huge difference, because previously we’d have to squeeze or cram into a little tiny room that fit about 40 people. Now we’ve created beautiful rooms for people where they can just feel comfortable. They have a quiet, private space.

Our architects, Horton and Malone, helped us build the Temple in 2003. We started working with them on the design for this new building a few years ago.

They suggested Martell Builders. We’d heard about Martell Builders; always good things about them.

Chad Martell got on the project pretty early. He chatted with us about our needs and what we were hoping to accomplish with the building.

We loved working with him. We loved his insights on how to maximize the space. He really went out of his way to provide information on how to make this building work.

It takes a contractor to bring a building to life. Martell Builders really did that. Chad and Alec Martel and all of Martel Builders crew were so patient. They really worked hard to meet our deadlines as best they could, given the conditions.

We were so appreciative of how hard they work to try to meet everything, despite the very cold winter weather. This was during COVID, which brought some interesting obstacles in terms of the supply chains and availability of supplies.

Chad spent time going through different options/talking through issues to make sure that we could keep moving forward on the project. Chad was always up-front about our options, and really tried to keep within budget and  the costs down as much as he could.

Chad was always very solution-oriented. That was very nice, because whenever a problem arose, he’d have a solution and options. It wasn’t just like “here’s the problem.” It was more like “here’s the problem. But here are our ideas to get through that.”

As I said, we’d only ever heard nice things about the Martell family and Martell Builders. I can say everything I heard about them was true. They’re fantastic!  I would recommend anyone to use them for a project.

We look forward to working with Martell through the years on future developments here at our property. You know, we really miss having them here every day! They became such a fixture here. I’d wait for the truck to pull up and run out and say “hi!” to them. They really became part of our family.

Martell is part of our community, and it’s extraordinary to get to know them. We’re so, so lucky to have them!”