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Jan 15,2006 - Jan 22,2006 |
6 - Giving Canadians shelter
With Greenpark Carlo Baldassarra has become the boy wonder of home construction
By Antonio Maglio
Originally Published: 2002-12-22
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Carlo Baldassarra
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This is the story of a boy who arrived in Toronto at the age of 19 and by the time he's 60 he's at the helm of Canada's largest home construction company. His name is Carlo Baldassarra, from Veroli (Frosinone), and the company is Greenpark Homes.
A few numbers suffice to give the picture of this phenomenon: Greenpark's yearly turnover reached one billion and 200 million dollars; it currently employs 90 people on its premises at 8700 Dufferin St., with more than 300 employees directly on its payroll and about 7,000 indirectly working for it.
It builds a house every 41 minutes, 14 per day, and since its creation it has built 38,000 houses in the Toronto area alone, with a diametre of 70 kilometres. A sea of houses, all of them of the highest quality.
"Nobody outdid us," proudly declares Carlo Baldassarra, Greenpark's chairman of the board. And he's got more than one reason to be proud: on October 19 he shall receive, along with his partners Phillip Rechtsman and Jack Wine, the "Ben Gurion Negev Award", a prestigious prize that the famous Israeli university, which specializes in environmental studies and research, awards to companies that distinguish themselves for the volume and quality of their work. It goes without saying that the boy from Veroli did not hope for so much; but what he did feel, right from the beginning, was that he would eventually succeed.It was clear to him since when, freshly arrived in Toronto, he was hired by a construction company as a carpenter, and 18 months later he had become not only the director of the section but also the owner's trustee who felt so confident of Carlo's surveillance of the sites that he took longer and longer stays in Italy.
A nice satisfaction, Mr. Baldassarra. But did you learn to be a carpenter in Italy?
"No, no. In Italy, after completing vocational school, I lent a hand to my father who owned a mill, and I helped him with the thresher at harvest time. I had never had anything to do with either construction or carpentry. I learned English here, taking no lessons. I worked hard, but at that time you had no choice. Let's say I was lucky; I will add, however, that I earned it."
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