Don’t let his casual demeanor fool you.
Dressed in brown boots, jeans and a button-down shirt with sleeves rolled up, Joe Foglia with his joke-filled, blunt-talking ways might lead you to believe he owns a small contracting business that would renovate your bathroom or kitchen.
And, sure enough, he will put in a new kitchen for you. He doesn’t pass up work because he wants his employees to draw steady income.
But Foglia is much more than a small-time remodeler. His construction portfolio bulges with an eye-popping array of multimillion-dollar projects on the island, Vero Beach mainland and to the south in Fort Pierce, including the largest home on the barrier island (44,000 square feet) and the house with the highest listing price ($35 million), not exactly weekend projects.
The odometer on Foglia’s Ford Explorer bears witness to the lengths the 49-year-old Broward County resident will go to scout a construction job and make a bid.
Foglia of Coral Springs drives 60,000 to 70,000 miles a year up and down the Florida East Coast, from the Keys to Jacksonville, sniffing out work, building huge luxury houses and launching innovative commercial projects. He spends about 25 hours a week in his SUV, including daily four-hour round trips to Vero from his golf course community house in Coral Springs.
His construction epicenter is the barrier island and Vero mainland, where he has done $35 million worth of construction work in the past three or four years, by his account. Going back a bit further, his residential development and renovations include 20 oceanfront or riverfront custom homes in Vero since 2004, including many of the finest and most architecturally distinctive homes in the 32963 Zip Code area.
Foglia’s most high-profile houses on the island include a 44,000-square-foot estate in the Kansas City Colony section (he used 50 workers for that job) and an ultra-contemporary, 18,000-square-foot house at 3700 Ocean Drive he built for businesswoman and developer Katherine McConvey that’s on the market for $35 million.
Foglia, who used to be a triathlete and ride mountain bikes, said his work is so intense nowadays that “I don’t do anything for fun. Weekends are for proposals, invoices and accounting.”
To maintain his pace and ability to take on projects, Foglia recently changed the structure of his company, Foglia Contracting Corp. DBA Foglia Custom Homes, hiring more than 20 fulltime workers so he is less dependent on top subcontractors who are in demand with other builders and developers in the current hot construction market.
He still uses skilled tradesmen to do specialty work such as plumbing and electric on his jobs, but now has a dedicated workforce of craftsmen he can count on at all times.
“Having the crews gives me the ability to look at work I wouldn’t have been able to consider before,” Foglia said.
One of Foglia’s main managers, Alex Silveira, said he moved with his family to Vero Beach from West Palm Beach because Foglia is hiring full-time employees.
Those workers were busy constructing one of his main Vero projects last week – four luxury waterfront townhomes on Royal Palm Pointe. The two-story, 3,300-square-foot homes with two boat slips each will sell for $1.8 million-$2.1 million. Foglia was hired by developer Bill Nelson for the Royal Palm Pointe project, which is called 21 Royal Harbor. The units are being marketed by Cindy O’Dare and Clark French of Premier Estate Properties.
Touring the 21 Royal Harbor site, Foglia pointed out his superior construction materials – exterior wood pieces that are spray primed on site and on all four sides; heavy-duty 20-gauge metal studs; and concrete blocks filled with a dense foam that hardens and increases insulation value.
Also on the mainland, Foglia is developing a new office building, 1745 Professional Center, on land he owns along State Road 60 about a block and a half from the Indian River County Courthouse. He expects to break ground in early 2017 but hasn’t decided whether to sell the building after it is built, sell office condo units or go for long-term leases with lawyers seeking office space near the courthouse.
Foglia, a Flushing, N.Y., native, has lived in Coral Springs since 1976, when his parents moved there from New York. Now, his parents live on the same street as he does in the Eagle Trace community in Coral Springs in northwest Broward County.
His dad, Joseph James Foglia, worked on rocket and lunar module projects for Grumman before going into property development. It was from his father that Foglia got his love for building.
“The only other job I had other than building was a part-time job maintaining tennis courts when I was younger,” said Foglia, who is married to Isabelle, a clothing designer who makes custom apparel for her e-commerce company called Bullet Blues. He has a 19-year-old son who attends the Art Institute of Fort Lauderdale.
Commercial real estate agent Billy Moss, who has worked with Foglia on his law office project in downtown Vero, described Foglia this way: “He’s a very progressive developer who is high energy with a great sense of humor and he is very meticulous about what he does.
“The most interesting thing about him is about how creative he is. His finishes in his homes and commercial buildings are all first-class, like what you would see in a large city, but he adjusts the look to fit Vero Beach. … He brings together brokers and architects and has a team spirit in his approach to his development. He knows his business and I enjoyed working with him.”
When not in Vero Beach, chances are Foglia is in Fort Pierce working on several major projects, where he is both developer and builder, in various stages of planning or construction:
Inlet Palms is a seven-unit luxury residential development in a world-class waterfront location at 1502 Seaway Drive on the south side the Fort Pierce Inlet. Units, which have docks and unobstructed views of the blue-water inlet and all the colorful boat traffic that passes through it, will sell for just under $1 million to just under $2 million. The three-level townhomes will have at least 3,000 square feet of living space. Construction on the one-acre site across the inlet from a state park is scheduled to begin the third week of October, with the homes ready for occupancy in October 2017. Foglia closed on the land, which once hosted an Army barracks, for $1.45 million in June 2015.
Indian River Commerce Center is a five-level mixed-use building on Indian River Drive at Citrus Avenue, a few blocks south of the popular Fort Pierce waterfront and a stone’s throw from the St. Lucie County Courthouse. Slated to break ground in the first quarter of 2017, it will feature retail space on the ground level, with parking on the second level. The third floor is designated for office and professional use, while the fourth and fifth floors will be residential.
Indian River Villas is a 23-unit condo development across from the five-level mixed-use building on Indian River Drive. Home prices will range from $400,000 to $1.2 million.
Sweeties Diner will be a new restaurant on U.S. 1 south of downtown near the Virginia Avenue corner that will be rehabbed from a previous eatery.
Foglia also rehabs houses and commercial buildings and does demolition. He enjoys talking about his penchant for “forensic remodeling,” where his workers can detect structural problems.
The builder has changed his management style from the time when he served as superintendent for all of his projects, now entrusting a trio of key supervisors to manage day-to-day operations on his building sites.
Silveira, a Foglia project manager and field supervisor, is a concrete shell specialist who can take a building project from the ground to the drywall.
Then there’s John Harwell, a former painter who can pick up where Silveira left off and close a project, since Harwell is very detail oriented from his painting background, Foglia said.
And, there’s Jose Medina, Foglia’s crew chief who coordinates his workers’ assignments.
Foglia has also invested in construction equipment, from excavators to extendable lifts. Having 20-plus workers on the payroll plus the equipment gives him the flexibility to knock out a wide range of construction work – from remodeling a kitchen to building stylish luxury homes that end up on the pages of design, building and architectural publications.
