Francesco Galesi, who became one of the richest players in the real estate industry while building a development empire has died at the age of 95.
Galesi died on Friday in Palm Beach, Florida, the Times Union reported. Galesi Group chief executive officer David Buicko, who took charge of the company a decade ago, confirmed the founder’s death was due to natural causes.
Galesi was born in 1930 in New Jersey to Sicilian immigrants. He served in the Marines and graduated from Princeton University before following one of his brothers into real estate.
Galesi garnered a reputation for seeing the potential in properties left behind by other developers. That included redeveloping military properties, beginning with a former Army helicopter plant in Buffalo.
He went into business for himself in 1969, the year his brother died of a brain tumor, and established himself with the redevelopment of a warehouse complex for the military into a 2.6-million-square-foot industrial park.
The Galesi Group became a big factor across the country, particularly in the Capital Region in New York. The company is credited with revitalizing downtown Schenectady and Galesi received the “Patroon” award, the city’s highest civic honor, though he never lived full-time in the local area.
In Texas, Galesi accumulated a portfolio of undervalued and foreclosed properties beginning in the late 1980s. His business activity spread all the way west to Bakersfield, California, where he became involved in an oil and gas business. He even bought a significant stake in a startup that made safety caps for soda bottles.
Galesi tried to expand into telecommunications, a venture that ended when his Telus Communications was purchased by the predecessor to WorldCom, which went bust in a 2002 bankruptcy. Galesi, who was on the WorldCom board, paid about $2.25 million to settle a lawsuit related to the company’s demise.
He reportedly lost $70 million to the telecommunications business over 20 years, denting a net worth estimated to be around $435 million in 1990, when he was named on the Forbes 400. That did little to deter his personal dealings, purchasing a 60-room mansion in the Hamptons for more than $2 million before selling it to Calvin Klein for $29 million.
Today, the Galesi Group’s real estate portfolio includes about 11 million square feet of industrial space and approximately 11,000 housing units.
After divorcing his first wife, Galesi married a Russian princess, Marina, who was by his side for 43 years until his death. He is also survived by two children, two more children from his first marriage, six g
randchildren and a brother.
— Holden Walter-Warner
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