A Growing Empire in the Sun

Schenectady-based Trimarchi Management builds a $650 million portfolio of properties in the South

By MIKE GOODWIN, Staff writer

Dennis Trimarchi lives in Guilderland and keeps his corporate headquarters in Schenectady, but many weeks he has a 1,420-mile commute to work. "I've been doing it so long, it's not bad at all," said the 49-year-old, who grew up in an Italian neighborhood in Albany that was demolished to make way for the Empire State Plaza.

Trimarchi is building a real estate empire of his own in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, flying to Texas nearly every other week to oversee a portfolio of $650 million worth of commercial and residential property that his firm, Trimarchi Management, has purchased since it was founded a year ago. It's turf he spent years studying as a top executive with the Galesi Group, a Rotterdam-based commercial developer and manager. Trimarchi has no desire to cut down on the travel. He's staying in the Capital Region, where, he said, the quality of life and family connections make leaving unthinkable.

But he also has no plans to invest in Albany-area real estate, a stable market resistant to the dramatic fluctuations that reward speculators who buy low and sell high. "If the right transaction came along, I would certainly be interested in investing in the Capital Region," he said. "It's a good, steady, increasing market."

Dallas-Fort Worth and other Sunbelt cities provide a different opportunity, where an expanding work force means more need for office space and apartments. "They're growth markets. They're growing markets. There's a good, quality labor force at affordable prices," he said. Of the real estate opportunities in Dallas-Fort Worth, he said, "60,000 jobs were added last year," and he estimates 800,000 more will be added to the region over the next eight years.

Trimarchi said he is focusing in part on Dallas because the real estate market there came back to earth when the high-tech boom ended in the late 1990s. He plans to hold the various properties he buys for five to seven years and then sell them -- at a profit for investors, he hopes.

Trimarchi is using the skills and connections he made during 19 years at Galesi Group. When he left to form his company in May 2005, Trimarchi was chief operating officer of Galesi Management Corp. and a senior vice president for Galesi Group. He was responsible for the financing, management, purchase and sale of more than 3 million square feet of commercial and residential space in New York, Florida, Colorado, Alabama, Georgia, Texas and several other states in the South.

Tracy Metzger, owner of TL Metzger & Associates LLC, a commercial and residential real estate brokerage in Albany, spent 10 years working with Trimarchi at Galesi Group and served as a vice president at Galesi Management. She said Trimarchi was a master at setting up complex real estate deals that involved multiple investors.

"He's one of the smartest guys I know," she said. "He's very focused and has the ability to put together complicated transactions that oftentimes involve not only different partners, but (different) financing pieces." He’s been in the business for a long time and I think he's built a reputation in his marketplace and with various strategic partners," Metzger added. "He has the ability (to make) transactions occur very quickly."

For the office and apartment portfolio he assembled in the sprawling east Texas metropolitan area, Trimarchi has focused on the region's main traffic arteries and sections served by the trains of Dallas Rapid Transit. The first deal was for three apartment complexes outside Dallas that Trimarchi Management and its investors bought for $98 million. The 1,363 units included in the planned community of Las Colinas in Irving, Texas, were purchased as a joint venture with GMAC Institutional Advisors, a major U.S. lender. Other investors in the real estate managed by Trimarchi include Somera Capital, Highland Capital, JFR Global and Fortis Properties.

Earlier this year, Trimarchi was involved in the nearly $300 million purchase of the 1.1-million-square-foot JPMorgan International Plaza in Dallas. The complex was developed in 1999, and JPMorgan occupies two of its three towers. Nike USA also is a tenant.

In May, Trimarchi purchased two downtown Dallas office towers, a deal worth $130 million, he said. The two buildings, the Hardwood Center and St. Paul Place, have nearly 1 million square feet of space. To date, Trimarchi has added 2,700 apartment units and 2 million square feet of offices to his portfolio. Trimarchi also is eyeing real estate in Atlanta, and in North Carolina and South Carolina.

When Trimarchi Management opened its Schenectady office, it had three employees; now, it has more than 70. Most of them work in Dallas, where they manage the firm's properties. More than a dozen work in the Schenectady office.

Trimarchi launched his company with a plan to acquire $1 billion worth of real estate within three years, but he expects to reach that goal by the end of the year.

"Throughout my career, I've always had to rearrange my goals," he said.