Rocco Iadarola (front center) and his wife, Joanne, the company’s Office Manager, are flanked by members of the Rocco Iadarola General Contracting Company team, including (from left) Assistant Office Manager Vanessa Jones and Paving Specialists Jacob Jones, Jason Evon and Leonard Dorosh.

Customized handcrafted, in-ground “compass” logos, like this one at Kennedy Park in Danbury, CT, are a specialty of the Rocco Iadarola General Contracting Company.

If you live in or visit Connecticut, there’s a good chance you’ve seen the inviting brick- and cobblestone-patterned crosswalks laid down at intersections by the Rocco Iadarola General Contracting Company (Rocco Iadarola Co.).

“I’d say 98% of my business is installing crosswalks for towns and cities in Connecticut,” says company Founder and Owner Rocco Iadarola, “and I don’t think there’s one town in the state I haven’t put them in. I’ve done more than 300 in Stamford alone. Cities like Greenwich, Hartford and New Haven are other frequent customers.”

Not that the Waterbury-based firm is limited to singular crosswalks at city intersections. The company creates custom pedestrian walkways at universities and municipal park plazas, lays highway median strips and lane markers, and defines bus lanes and bike routes. Its team also installs etched and stamped asphalt driveways for homeowners and entrances for big-box retailers.

Rocco is especially proud of the in-ground “compass” logos he’s designed in asphalt for colleges, parks and others. A prime example: a cracked egg with a feather protruding for Doyle’s Double A Farm in Prospect, Connecticut.

But while you may have walked all over his company’s brick- and stone-patterned surfaces, there’s something important you might not know: They’re not actually composed of bricks or stones.

Rocco Iadarola Co. specializes in stamped asphalt paving, using ingenious construction techniques and thermoplastic materials to put down surfaces that simulate brick and stone so well that many people can’t tell the difference.

“Most people don’t know about this product,” Rocco says. “Some 10 or 15 years ago, a group of architects and engineers did a study on it and found stamped asphalt looks so much like real stonework that many people think it is the real thing.

“As importantly,” he adds, “experience has shown that stamped asphalt materials are safer, more durable and less expensive to use than the real things in the long run.”

The Path to Making Pathways

Rocco’s road to stamped asphalt walkways wasn’t straight or obvious. When he immigrated to the United States from Italy in 1963, he seemed destined to join his cousins in the toolmaking trade. This wasn’t out of line; two of Rocco’s biggest pleasures are a sense of creativity and an affinity for tinkering with machinery. What he didn’t go for was working in a tool shop.

“I tried it,” he says. “I love machines, but I’m not a person to work inside.” In 1968, at age 21, he started his own business, cutting grass, planting trees and providing other landscaping services. He had met his future wife, Joanne, in school; 2021 marks their 50th anniversary. Joanne ran the office; he handled the outside work.

Over time, he felt the desire to pivot from landscaping to other creative services. “I began doing masonry and stone work,” he says. “As the years passed, I bought machines and graduated into paving—standard blacktop asphalt paving. I did a lot of work for shopping malls, convalescent homes and other customers.

“Then, in the early 1990s, I was introduced to stamped asphalt. I was one of the first contractors in Connecticut to pave with stamped asphalt. My first crosswalk was in Stamford.”

Go Big or Go Niche

The pioneer of stamped asphalt was a Canadian company called Integrated Paving Concepts Inc., founded in 1992, best known for offering products called StreetPrint Pavement Texturing and DuraTherm Decorative Crosswalks. They also are credited with creating the stamped effects that replicate brick and stonework.

“I was intrigued by the possibilities,” Rocco says. “It wasn’t something you would use to pave full roadways or large parking areas, but it offered colorful, interesting options for areas you want to stand out, such as crosswalks, bus lanes, highway lane markers and the like. They sold me a package to get started, and I began providing stamped asphalt products throughout Connecticut.”

With stamped asphalt in its arsenal, Rocco’s company thrived. “In 2006,” Rocco says, “Integrated Paving sponsored a contest in which contractors were given individual private residences to create hardscapes for. We did a walkway and a circular driveway for a home in Woodbridge, Connecticut.

“We were judged No. 1 in the country and No. 2 among the 40 different countries where Integrated Paving had a presence.”

Rocco Iadarola Co. was still doing standard blacktop asphalt paving as well as stamped asphalt. Contracts were coming in—and Rocco began to feel stretched.

“We reached a point,” he says, “where I realized I had to make a decision: Grow bigger as a general paving contractor or pull back and specialize in the stamped asphalt niche. I enjoyed the creativity of stamped asphalt, and it was proving to be a very promising market.

‘And,” he adds, “I preferred to remain small and work hands-on on my jobs. I chose the stamped asphalt specialty. It’s been a very rewarding decision.”

Along the way, a North Carolina-based company called Ennis-Flint, Inc. began offering stamped and decorative paving products. Established in 1996, today, it’s a worldwide leader in the traffic safety, access, rail and road marking industries, providing a comprehensive line of pavement marking materials and electronic control products. Ennis-Flint became the primary supplier of stamped asphalt materials for Rocco’s firm.

“We reached a point where I realized I had to make a decision: Grow bigger as a general paving contractor or pull back and specialize in the stamped asphalt niche. I enjoyed the creativity of stamped asphalt, and it was proving to be a very promising market.” Rocco Iadarola, Founder and Owner, Rocco Iadarola General Contracting Company

Putting His Stamp on Things

For road-related projects like crosswalks and media strips, Rocco Iadarola Co. works hand-in-hand as a subcontractor for blacktop-paving general contractors who are otherwise dealing with long stretches of roadway.

The technology of stamped asphalt paving centers on 2-foot by 2-foot sheets of pre-formed thermoplastic material, specially designed propane-powered infrared heat machines and wire meshes that determine the patterns. The thermoplastic is formed by Ennis-Flint with resins, binders, glass beads and other materials. The wire meshes determine the patterns, coming in myriad shapes to replicate bricks, stones, slate tiles, herringbone patterns, whatever the designers specify.

Using an epoxy primer, Rocco’s crew lays out whatever design the architects have specified. “We put the sheets down on the surface and the infrared machine goes to work, heating the plastic to about 300 degrees,” he says. “We’re careful not to overdo it and burn the material. We take it off and move to a new area, and the temperature goes down to 150 degrees.” He has five machines, ranging in widths from 3 to 14 feet.

“Then,” he says, “we put a wire mesh with the stamp pattern down over the treated material and go over it with a 1,000-pound compactor. It drives the mesh down into the compound, establishing the pattern. Then we take the mesh away and move to the next section.”

The material comes in a wide range of colors, presenting the opportunity for high visibility walkways with vibrant shades or intricate designs with motifs like flowers or spheres. For traffic uses, several colors are recognized as standard—a specific green for bike lanes, reds for bus lanes, tans for pedestrian plazas. Ennis-Flint provides all paints and a variety of surfaces, including DuraTherm, an inlaid pattern approach, and DecoMark, often used for surface signage and logos.

Typically, the grout line—the groove between bricks—is 3/8-inch deep. The newly laid section is ready for traffic after about 20 minutes, Rocco says. Bike and bus lanes are different, he notes. A surface with inlaid grooves doesn’t make for a great ride, and in that case the treatment is a surface color applied over standard asphalt. But the areas around bus stops often have bump outs, segments of designed-brick patterns that delineate the stop.

School Days

The company has completed multiple projects for Central Connecticut State University in New Britain, totaling some 44,000 square feet of work and ranging from brick-patterned walkways, roadways and parking areas to pedestrian malls and decorative motifs.

At Fordham University in New York City—one of the firm’s few ventures outside Connecticut—the company installed brick-patterned walkways throughout the campus.

And at the Salisbury School in Salisbury, Connecticut, Rocco and his team did extensive work, including the school common area, involving 22,000 square feet of sidewalks connecting all the buildings. For this project, his team created 10 different custom designs.

“To a large degree, the campus work is about safety and New England winters,” Rocco says. “The schools want to keep students safe during icy conditions, but concrete treated with salt requires constant repair and frequent replacement. Stamped asphalt is a nice solution. The thermoplastic material costs more, but it lasts much longer and is considerably less expensive in the long run. It’s also safer for walking because it can be formulated to provide a better surface grip.

A major project for Rocco’s firm in 2008 involved adding a stamped asphalt median strip and edge markings along some 2 miles of Route 44 around Avon Mountain west of Hartford. A high volume of traffic accidents occur along this stretch of highway. The Connecticut Department of Transportation wanted “traffic calming” medians and edges to provide visual and vibrational stimulation for drivers, along with other safety measures.

“We installed 8-foot-wide median segments of terracotta brick-patterned stamped asphalt between the two-lane, East-West roadbeds, and 2- to 3-foot-wide strips along each outside edge of the highway,” Rocco says.

“It was the largest project I’ve done and, at the time, the largest stamped asphalt section in the country.”

Rocco does all this with one crew of three workers, plus a couple of part-timers when needed. “I only have one crew because I don’t want more,” he says. “I’m a little fanatical about making sure every job is done right, and I’m out on pretty much every job.”

And Then, There are the Logos

With a passion to create things, Rocco loves creating special designs inlaid into park and school surfaces. He’s done compasses and customized logos for clients like Central Connecticut State and Western Connecticut State universities, Kennedy Park in Danbury and a private residence on Candlewood Lake, near Fairfield. In Danbury, known as “Hat City” for its history as a hat-manufacturing center, he created a broad-brimmed hat emblem in front of Danbury High School.

“A compass in front of an auditorium or a park entrance can delineate it and make it special,” he says. “Most installers just lay down plastic patterns provided by a manufacturer. I prefer to carve it into the surface and then paint it with an epoxy. If it’s damaged by snowplows, it doesn’t have to be replaced like a plastic pattern does. I can easily repaint it.” He’s carved out logos ranging in size from 5 to 30 feet.

“The bottom line is not only that I enjoy doing it, it’s less expensive for customers because I’m doing it by hand rather than buying expensive manufacturers’ materials. Plus, the client gets something that’s one of a kind.”

He adds, “I feel good about all my work. In the long run, stamped asphalt is much more cost-effective for the customer than stones, it’s sturdy and longer lasting and it’s safer. Best of all, it comes in a range of charming patterns and colors. It makes people feel good.”