Anthony V. Pugliese III Biography
At 17 years old, Anthony V. Pugliese III started his own, highly successful company. Pugliese Pools, built swimming pools throughout New Jersey and New York. By 1969 Anthony designed the first “natural look” pool. It was this unique design that propelled the company to a status symbol among the affluent in the northeast, where the design continues today.
By 1971 Pugliese Pools began branching out into real estate. Renovating and restoring historic structures became a winter staple. The “cold weather” projects eventually became a full-time endeavor of The Pugliese Company. With a name change for his company, Anthony honed his skills in assessing and increasing the value of vacant urban properties and underutilized space. By monitoring the latest trends and needs, Anthony was able to re-zone and repackage sites to create value. The Pugliese Company continues to focus on these efforts today.
Under Anthony’s guidance, the privately held, family-owned company evolved into a firm that developed more than two million square feet of commercial buildings. His remarkable achievements and forethought of purpose have earned Anthony a reputation as one of the most trusted real estate developers in the state; sought after by joint venture, institutional and individual partners alike.
One specialization area is the creation and construction of state-of-the-art self-storage facilities. This patented 21st century design provides the consumer the ultimate storage experience whereby they never enter the building, or put their stored items on a cart. Each storage unit is delivered to the customer and re-stored with a mere touch of a keypad.
A long time conservationist, Anthony understood the need to reshape the way individuals store their personal items. Buildings produce 48 percent of the annual carbon emissions in our country, according to the U.S. Department of Energy. With an eye for the future, Anthony and a team of professionals developed a new method for creating storage facilities. With LEED-Certified construction, combined with an automated storage and retrieval machine, and efficiencies that save as much as 50 percent of the normal operating expenses; the automated self-service format earned the automated self-storage facility the Green Building of America award.
Anthony’s philosophy, based on old world traditions, long-standing relationships and values; where your word is your bond and a hand shake still counts; is known as the “Pugliese Way” of doing business. Strategic and tactical planning combined with finely-tuned execution skills have been the company’s trademark since its first acquisition and subsequent redevelopment in the early 1970s of a 10,000 square foot vacant supermarket in northern New Jersey. In the following decades, The Pugliese Company acquired, sold, managed and/or developed millions of square feet of residential, retail, industrial and commercial properties for manufacturing, chemical plants, distribution centers, shopping centers, self-storage facilities, including land for Wal-Mart and Sam’s Club locations, along with owning and managing millions of square feet of commercial and industrial properties.
In a visionary move in 2004, Anthony acted quickly to acquire one of the largest tracts of land in central Florida comprising of 27,410 acres and rivaling Disney World in size, this prime site is located at the crossroads of the Florida Turnpike, U.S. Route 441 and State Road 60. This eventually grew to 41,410 acres with the addition of 14,000 acres placed under contract in 2007 which is over 64 square miles and almost two and half times the size of Manhattan. This astonishing acreage in southern Osceola County is a mix of citrus groves and cattle grazing, and is located one hour from Orlando, the Palm Beach International Airport and Disney World.
This land acquisition will be recorded in Florida real estate journals as one of the most strategic land purchases since Walt Disney quietly accumulated 27,258 acres in 47 separate transactions over a seven-year period in the early 1960s. But rather than a theme park, Anthony planned to create a solution for an area formerly doomed to succumb to urban sprawl with the creation of a P.E.D. (Planned Environmental Development), a term coined by Anthony. “We are slowly, but surely destroying the world we live in,” Anthony says. “Cities need not grown in an unplanned, disorderly, irresponsible manner. We can have a clean life and a clean world through clean technology.”
As originally conceived, Destiny, “America’s First Eco-Sustainable City”, would be one of the first cities in the world with an inverted, decentralized, smart-grid infrastructure; allowing the residents and businesses operating in this environment to have a near zero carbon footprint. The self-sustaining city would also preserve more space than it consumes, and supports surrounding agriculture and nature preserves. Destiny was one of the first participants and the first in Florida selected at the C40 Summit in Seoul, Korea as one of the 16 founding projects of the Climate Positive Development Program. The Clinton Climate Initiative program supports the development of large-scale urban projects that demonstrate cities can grow in ways that are “climate positive.”
While land acquisition, sales and development are the core foundation of The Pugliese Company, its diversified portfolio has included real estate holdings, self-storage facilities, a construction company, an internet protocol video technology company and a cutting-edge recycling facilities company located in New Jersey.
Anthony’s successes go far beyond real estate. He developed technologies used in internet protocol video, electronic ticketing, electronic baggage check and automated self-storage. He also wrote a number of screenplays and produced three feature films. Anthony is a pioneer, an inventor, a writer, an actor, an artist and a designer with the ability to create impressive and award-winning buildings. With the eye of a trained architect, in 1984, Anthony personally designed the 135,000 square-foot Crystal Corporate Center office building, located in Boca Raton. This double-glass arched building was Anthony’s first building design attempt and it won the coveted National Association of Office & Industrial Parks (NAOIP) Award for Best Class “A” office building design over 100,000 square feet.
Anthony is currently working on a two-year project to personally complete one hundred fine art paintings. The paintings are to be displayed and sold at charity events, auctions, galleries and from Artworks 4 Food website. One hundred percent of the sales proceeds after third party sales commissions and expenses from art sales will be donated to Artworks 4 Food. The goal of Artworks 4 Food is to provide meals to hungry children and their families starting in Palm Beach County.
The Pugliese Company is located at the Pugliese Corporate Center, 101 Pugliese’s Way, Delray Beach, Florida and in the heart of the historic Pineapple Grove District. Anthony is credited as the catalyst that started the redevelopment of the entire Pineapple Grove District. Anthony has been a full-time resident of Gulf Stream, Florida since 1982. He is married to Laura Pugliese and has four children.
Visit The Pugliese Company Website at www.puglieseco.com
