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Victor Borelli, left; Nelo Borelli, center; and Louis LaRosa stand in Alerco Manufacturing's factory |
Business Monday From Broker to banker, he has cultivated much success in 31 years here Nelo G. Borelli’s business card reads “padrone” It could just as well say manufacturer, banker, real estate broker or machinist.
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Since coming to San Jose with his family in 1952, Borelli, “the quietly made a fortune, largely in commercial and industrial real estate development. His real estate projects have given birth to many partnerships – a network that still thrives despite his retirement from the brokerage business five years ago.
Borelli, now 60 years old and silver-haired, said he never tried to build an empire. But by turning friends into business partners and as one business spun off another, a small fiefdom was created. In the process, Borelli gained a reputation as a kindly godfather.
Today he can look back on a productive 31 years here in which he helped found Pacific Valley Bank, developed two major industrial parks, owned a number of apartment buildings and topped it off by expanding a metal-forming company.
"All the businesses I got into, I didn’t seek them out,” Borelli said. “They came to me. Most of the properties I bought were ones I had tried to sell to others. The owners would come up to me and say ‘Borelli, you work so hard, let me make you a deal.'”
One of those deals came in 1960. Up until that point, Borelli had spent his first two years in San Jose working at a hardware store and then spent the next six years renovating and renting apartments.
Then in 1960, Borelli and his brother, Victor, his partner in all ventures, purchased 20 acres off North First Street in Santa Clara for $5,000 an acre. Four years later, they developed an industrial park there and in 1965 sold the property for five times what they paid for it.
Some of the profit was used to buy 20 acres on Bonaventura Drive in North San Jose for $11,000 an acre. Partners in the venture sold some of the property for more than three times what they bought it for a few years later.
“We took very careful steps,” Borelli said. “We were too conservative. If we had gone for broke and not gone broke, we’d have made a killing. But I have no regrets. We’re well fixed.”
Borelli came to the United States from Italy with his parents and his brother Victor. Borelli was nine years old at the time. The family settled in Chicago.
Borelli filled his head with Horatio Alger stories and was determined to be successful. Instead of pursuing the history and political science studies he loved, Borelli trained as a machinist. Although he admittedly lacked skills, his initiative landed him a job as school shop foreman.
From then on, Borelli kept doing things “that made it easy for lightning to hit me.”
Lightning struck for the first time in the 1960 real estate venture. It struck again in 1974, when the Borelli brothers became partners with Arthur LaRosa, president of Alerco Manufacturing of San Jose, a producer of sheet metal products used in residential construction.
They had known LaRosa since 1955 when Borelli Realty (Nelo’s and Victor’s apartment business) sold LaRosa’s father several houses. In 1972, LaRosa went to the Borellis to get financing for equipment needed for his new metal forming business.
Two years later, the plant LaRosa was leasing was put on the market. Again he turned to the Borellis, who bought the building. Shortly afterward, LaRosa’s original partner bowed out and the brothers became joint owners of the business.
The factory at 81 Bonaventura Drive became Nelo Borelli’s favorite lunch stop.
When he got active in Alerco (he’s still secretary and treasure), Borelli let his brokerage license lapse and he and his brother quit real estate. Nelo Borelli’s only child, Ralph, took over the real estate business with a partner, Phil Burke, forming Borelli & Burke, industrial property developers.
Nelo took over Alerco’s finances and Victor oversaw its plant maintenance. LaRosa ran day-to-day operations with help from his two brothers Louis and Rock.
When the Borellis got into manufacturing, the business was booming. Two years later, however, things soured along with the slump in housing construction.
To survive, Alerco broadened its product line to 200 from 10 and instituted various cost saving measures that helped the company ride out the housing slump.
Nelo Borelli’s pride in being as ideas man has helped Alerco grow. Using one of his suggestions, Alerco became so proficient at producing vents that its competitors began buying Alerco’s products.
Companies such as Silver Metal Products Co. of Livermore, which largely makes heavy metal connectors that join building beams, bought Alerco’s vents to pack in their boxes. That gave Alerco wide distribution without having to hire a sales force.
“If we got enough of the market, we could afford to tool up,” Borelli said, “We took the gamble. Alerco was a prime example of spotting something you could play with.”
Borelli likes to roam among the large, wooden crates of products in Alerco’s factory. In his polo shirt and checkered pants, he looks more at home here than in the commercial bank he helped establish in 1975.
Two years after founding Pacific Valley Bank, Borelli was named its chairman.
“Banking is somewhat of an ego trip,” Borelli said. “Naming me chairman was a thank-you. I sold the second most stock. I wasn’t qualified to be a banker.” He said he hasn’t had many failures. The largest was a loss of $5,000 in a late-1960’s drive-in restaurant venture. Borelli was the leasing agent for the venture, which died.
His management by involvement” and an attitude that sacrifice, not luck, makes someone successful have been Borell’s tickets to success.
Or, as he puts it, “The guy who never goes to bat never strikes out. But, he never gets a hit either.”
