Giancola: Rutland developer ponders the city's sites

Vermont Business Magazine, Apr 01, 2000

City planners call it brownfield development when some brave soul tackles the job of rehabilitating an old factory site for new, productive uses. Joseph Giancola, who started his contracting career out of a car trunk 40 years ago and now is one of the biggest developers in Rutland County, calls it buying stuff that's falling down and fixing it up.

The Giancola family bought the abandoned, century-old Howe-Richardson scale factory from A erojet General of La Jolla, CA, in 1989. Despite contamination by toxic waste, they turned it into the 18-acre Howe Center complex, whose quarter-million-plus square feet house dozens of tenants employing nearly 400 people, and is assessed by the City of Rutland at more than $2.5 million. Professional city and regional planners come to see it as a prime example of a small -city industrial site rehabilitated almost entirely with private funds.

Joe Giancola views Howe Center as the latest and one of the largest projects in a career that's included the building of more than 500 houses and numerous commercial buildings. His companies sell and develop real estate, do construction, extract gravel, rent equipment to contractors and do-ityourselfers, provide cranes at construction sites, and even sell bicycles.

It's a family business all the way through. Giancola's wife, Barbara, his son-in-law, John Allard, and his sons Peter and Mark are all in the business. His son David, an increasingly well known movie and video maker, is on his own, but does business from Howe Center.

Richard Andrews interviewed Giancola for Vermont Business Magazine at his construction company's office on Granger Street in Rutland in early March.

VBM: Tell us about your businesses.

GIANCOLA: Well, I started out as Joseph A Giancola, the builder, out of the back of a car with a trailer. , used to fix stairs, porches and chimneys - things like that.

Then I did remodeling and renovations. I went from that to houses, bought a pickup truck and started buying equipment.

And then for the last 40 years we've been buying buildings. I bought my first house when I was 20 years old. My parents, who were Italians who spoke English, but didn't read or write, signed at the bank for me. They put their house up to buy my first four apartment house in 1959. From that point on I bought land and buildings, and we built 500 houses over the years.

I'm a charter member of the National Association of Home Builders and of the Central Vermont Homebuilders Association. I've been president of the Vermont Homebuilders Association. I became a Realtor and an insurance broker; was the president of the Rutland County Board of Realtors. I've been pretty active in real estate.

The business went from building houses to commercial buildings and commercial development. We've basically been buying all the stuff that's falling down and renovating it.

We started our own design-build company, Giancola Construction. We do commercial buildings, office buildings, and we also bid sewer work.

Off that sprang some other related companies. Toolcraft Limited, which does business as Toolcraft Rental and Sales, and Green Mountain Rental and Sales. One store is for contractors, and one is for homeowners. They rent tools, equipment and related items for the construction trade and homeowner trade. We also use the facilities.

When we started commercial building, we developed a company called Vermont Crane Service. First we had just one crane, and now we have five or six. We stay in the Rutland County area. That company runs through Giancola Construction.

We have a company called Vermont Earth Resources Limited, which has a couple of gravel pits on a 1,000-acre farm. Mainly the gravel is for our own use, but we sell some of it.

In one of our stores we have a bike store, where we sell 10speed bikes and that kind of stuff.

The family owns a couple of land development corporations, including Granger Enterprises, Stone Ridge Drive Development, East Ridge Drive Development and BoMac Corporation, which is Woodland Heights Countryside Estates. We own most of the lots in the area; we have developed many for singlefamily residential use.

Twenty-some-odd years ago, I made John Allard, my brotherin-law, a partner in Giancola Construction. Seven or eight years ago, my son Peter, who is a civil and professional engineer, came into the company. He now owns part, and runs it with me. We're mainly a family-run business, with my wife and I right in this office, basically, for 35 years since we've been married.

VBM: You grew up in Rutland?

GIANCOLA: We grew up in Rutland, just down the street, actually. I'm 61, been here all my life.

My youngest son, David, was with me for a while. He's the movie-maker in town. Edgewood Productions is his company. He makes feature films, been very successful at it.

VBM: What do you think about that interest?

GIANCOLA: He's had it since he was a little boy, eight or nine years old. I watched him with little hand-held cameras, Super 8, making movies with kids in the neighborhood, him the director. Got out of high school, he said, "I'm leaving you, Dad." He was 17, working at Green Mountain Rental with me. He said, "I'm going to go into the video business." I said, "Oh, you are? Oh. OK."