Professional Profile: Joseph Vetrano - 1966

Name: Joseph Vetrano - 1966

Title: Broker

Company: Joseph P. Vetrano, Real Estate

Location: Bristol, CT

Birthplace: New Britain, CT - 1912

Education: High School; Vermont Academy Joseph P. Vetrano, international entrepreneur, developer of the $22 million West Farms Mall Shopping Center, the $5 million Bristol shopping Mall, has developed 11 complete shopping centers in Co. and one in Staten Island; set up 32 supermarkets and arranged assorted mergers. It has made him wealthy and in Italy it has made him a shopping center and supermarket consultant. Vetrano is what you might call a successful grocer, but also a part-time one, which means his partnership in a $2 million tomato canning industry in Italy is not his real job. His real occupation is: Broker: New York and Rome. Vetrano accepts the consultant tag but adds: “I am an ambassador without portfolio, a business and industrial ecumenical man who starts with a piece of an Italian canning plant, finds himself eyeing the Italian suburbs for shopping centers, and ends up looking for American markets, for Italian television shorts and red orange juice.” He and Stephen P. Mugar, Chairman of the Board of Star Market, Inc., of Boston and the largest single stockholder in Jewel Tea, went abroad to survey the different countries, “get down to the people, and get the feel of what they would like from American businessmen.” Vetrano builds in Italy with the financial assurance of the Bank of Israel: “I think Italy could stand about 10 good-sized shopping centers… Will they like it? Will the women push carriages? Well, they are getting used to it!” Joe went into advertising and the promotion of tobacco companies in Conn. and New York before going into the wholesale liquor business and finally real estate. The large and growing real estate business, plus political activity is Joe’s way of life. The challenge, “working 15 or 16 hours a day,” will keep him building on both sides of the Atlantic for some time. By building, he “breaks down barriers.”­­