I. The Story Begins With Mario Nicosia

For nearly fifty years, Mario Nicosia, Founder of GTI Properties,  has been an energetic and effective developer of residential and commercial real estate in Boston, Massachusetts. Today his portfolio includes one million square feet of office and retail property in the city’s rapidly evolving SoWa Centre and over four hundred residential rental apartments in the South End and St. Botolph neighborhoods.

Starting in the late 1960s, as an undergraduate at Northeastern University, Mario noticed and was attracted to the large construction projects being built in Boston, most notably the Prudential Center and the Christian Science complex. He observed the changing urban neighborhood with keen interest and wanted to participate in the evolving real estate market. As a result, Mario left Northeastern University after three years and became a commission-based rental agent, taking the first steps of his real estate career. At age 21, Mario opened his own apartment rentals brokerage office and purchased his first property on St. Botolph Street with a small down payment. Mario soon realized he was more interested in buying and renovating properties than leasing them for others. He focused his attention on the very rough but affordable St. Botolph neighborhood.

II. The Good Times and The Bad

As Mario built his properties portfolio, he worked alongside individual property owners in the St. Botolph neighborhood to clean up and improve the district. He also witnessed and experienced the first urban rejuvenation of his career as people began to flock to the city due to the gas crisis of the time. Eventually, Mario was recognized for his work, given an award by the neighborhood, and received favorable press from the Boston Globe for his efforts. Unfortunately, as with many real estate cycles, the good times did not last indefinitely. A significant real estate slump in the late 1970s dampened everyone’s prospects, but, as it turned out, ultimately worked to Mario’s advantage. At the time, he was managing various properties for now-defunct banks such as the Boston Five Cent Savings Bank and Dorchester Savings. He was able to negotiate favorable deals to buy their properties due to the level of competition in the market.

Around this time, Mario began to focus on the potential of an entirely different Boston neighborhood. The industrial zone running along the remote southeast edge of the South End was a mix of huge, mostly vacant nineteenth-century mill buildings. Starting with his acquisition in 1978 of 46 Waltham Street, an aging mixed-use commercial property used by struggling artists and small businesses, Mario began to invest in this rundown South End neighborhood in the early 1980s. The subsequent purchase of buildings along Harrison Avenue and surrounding streets followed during this period. These properties were handsome, brick-and-beam factory buildings that had fallen into disrepair. They were grimy and unsafe and thinly populated by an assortment of offbeat, artistic, and rough-hewn individuals and enterprises. To say that the neighborhood thirty years ago was dangerous, lonely, and best avoided is an understatement. But, as he had done in the St. Botolph neighborhood years earlier, Mario recognized an opportunity where others were hesitant to commit or invest.

Over the next twenty years, Mario continued to acquire and improve the properties he had rescued from neglect or the wrecking ball in compromised neighborhoods. The second real estate slump of his career occurred during this time (generating the “Stay Alive ‘Til ’95” catchphrase). There were setbacks to be dealt with, but by the late 1990s, things were improving. Mario realized that the cure for depressed urban areas was a concentrated effort to introduce everyday activity, commerce, and livelihood into a barren urban landscape. By this time, the South End and St. Botolph neighborhoods were firmly embraced by a city reclaiming rundown communities. Both districts saw improving property values, declining crime, and a return to the enthusiasm and prosperity that had developed these neighborhoods in the first place, one hundred years earlier.

III. SoWa Art + Design District

For the last fifteen years, Mario has spent a great deal of time and effort improving his Harrison Avenue and other South End neighborhood properties. A key component in Mario’s campaign to bootstrap the southeast border of the South End was his decision to give the area a new and distinct name. Along the lines of SoHo (South of Houston Street) in New York and SoMa (South of Market Street) in San Francisco, Mario determined that a re-brand of the district was vital in rescuing its sordid reputation. In 2001 he launched an all-out media drive to call this area SoWa (South of Washington Street). Although initially smirked at, the name SoWa has been fully embraced, and in the last decade, it has come into its own as a recognized destination in Boston. Today, SoWa Centre is championed as the center of the city’s contemporary art community.

SoWa Centre welcomes individual artists – as it has for over forty years – and a growing number of cutting edge businesses in young industries. GTI Properties welcomes web designers, internet marketing, research and branding companies, architects, and designers of all stripes to this vibrant community for the artistic vibe that informs their craft. Mario recognized early on that SoWa needed not only the name as an identity, but also a concentration of people and uses that would mass to create a lively urban enclave. Mario was not shy about insisting to anyone who would listen that cities need density to thrive. Accordingly, he rented retail, office, and residential space at attractive rates to people from all over the city, with the specific goal of building up the population and vitality of this area during the day and at night.

SoWa Centre in the South End is today an acclaimed success and GTI Properties has helped the neighborhood become sufficiently dense. It took long years of seeding and watering, but its time has come, and the proof is on the skyline two blocks away in every direction, where other real estate developers’ cranes are swinging.