Top Realtor in SW Florida Missing
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SW Fla. realty mogul D'Alessandro missing
By Dick Hogan
Originally posted on September 14, 2007
Authorities in New Jersey are searching for Fort Myers real estate broker Frank D’Alessandro.
Prominent Fort Myers real estate broker Frank D’Alessandro was missing Thursday night after his overturned orange kayak was found about nine miles off the New Jersey coast.
U.S. Coast Guard crews in an airplane, helicopter and patrol boat were searching for D’Al-essandro, 52, who was visiting his ailing mother in Point Pleasant Beach, N.J., authorities said.
As of 10:30 p.m. Thursday, there was no sign of D’Alessandro, Coast Guard spokeswoman Faith Wisinski said. She added the search would continue overnight and into today.
“We are still searching,” she said Thursday night. “It was confirmed that it was his kayak.”
Wisinski said searchers found a life jacket and half of an aluminum pull-apart oar. She said the kayak had no signs of damage. Searchers hadn’t found any other signs of D’Alessandro.
The Coast Guard and the New Jersey State Police Marine Services Bureau began their search after D’Alessandro’s mother, who’s recovering from hip surgery, called authorities because he failed to meet her for a scheduled lunch date, Point Pleasant Beach Borough Police Chief Daniel DePolo said.
D’Alessandro went out kayaking sometime between 9 and 10 p.m. Tuesday, he said.
The Coast Guard received the report at 1:30 p.m. Wednesday, and a helicopter was on the scene three minutes later, said Coast Guard Petty Officer Nyx Cangemi.
DePolo said D’Alessandro had rented an oceanfront house for two weeks.
A dive team searched the location where D’Alessandro took the boat into the water, but “I don’t believe they came up with anything,” he said.
Word of D’Alessandro’s disappearance spread quickly Thursday night in Lee County’s real estate community.
“I’m in total shock,” said Hal Arkin, senior broker at Gates D’Alessandro & Woodyard LLC, where D’Alessandro is qualifying broker.
“He was going to be coming back on the 18th of September,” said Arkin. He and his wife had planned dinner with D’Alessandro and his girlfriend.
“He enjoys the outdoors,” he said. “He’s an avid kayaker.”
Arkin said D’Alessandro has been traveling between Fort Myers and New Jersey as many as three times a week to visit his mother and stepfather, the only family Arkin knows D’Alessandro has.
“This does not sound at all like Frank,” he said.
“We became very good friends all these years,” Arkin said. “He gave me an opportunity.”
D’Alessandro’s mother has been ill for months, and he faces numerous lawsuits filed this year regarding real estate deals that went sour after the real estate boom ended.
This has been a difficult time for D’Alessandro, said Arkin.
“It’s extremely stressful for him,” he said. “He’s a strong man, but he’s tired and exhausted.”
“We’re devastated,” said Samir Cabrera, 30, who worked for D’Alessandro from 2003 until a month ago at his real estate firm D’Alessandro & Woodyard. “Frank is a very dear family friend of ours. We’re just extremely concerned.”
He called D’Alessandro “just an extremely first-class person, and a great businessman on top of that. I don’t know many other human beings as good as him; that's just my personal opinion. He was a great person to work for.”
Both face lawsuits brought by former customers of the real estate agency who bought investment houses that were to be built by First Home Builders.
The houses were to have tenants already in place to defray the investors’ mortgages, but prices for real estate have fallen sharply in the past year and rental rates have gone down as well.
Many of the investors are unwilling or unable to actually buy the houses and some are alleging that they were misled by the real estate company, the builder and various lenders. Cabrera and D’Alessandro both deny any wrongdoing.
D’Alessandro writes a column on real estate for The News-Press.
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