Wilbur Breslin, whose eponymous agency has made its mark throughout Lengthy Island, died on Wednesday at NYU Langone Hospital in Mineola, Newsday reported. He was 99.
Breslin Realty Growth Company was and stays a significant growth participant on Lengthy Island. Franklin Plaza in Backyard Metropolis is among the many firm’s developments. Final month, the agency proposed a 300-unit mixed-use growth in Center Island.
Breslin was born within the Bronx in 1926. Breslin’s father, Harry, ran a dozen fruit stands in Hempstead, which impressed Wilbur’s transfer into actual property. He began as a residential dealer, opened an workplace in 1953 and pivoted to industrial brokering and growth a dozen years later.
Breslin’s agency has been chargeable for main, town-shaping developments in municipalities throughout Lengthy Island, together with The Langdon in Lynbrook, The Hub in Hempstead and Smith Haven Plaza in Lake Grove. It additionally stretched into New Jersey, Pennsylvania and even Mississippi and Louisiana.
Breslin is also known as the determine who satisfied Kmart to open up store on Lengthy Island after twenty years of campaigning.
“He was a driving drive in bringing buying facilities to Lengthy Island,” Edward Blumenfeld, president of Blumenfeld Growth Group BDG, instructed the publication.
Breslin’s prolificness did create enemies, notably with environmentalists. However Breslin tried to work with conservationists, in accordance with his son, serving to to usher within the 1993 Lengthy Island Pine Barrens Act to protect a lot of the Pine Barrens.
Breslin’s son, firm president Kenneth Breslin, described his father as a “tireless employee … that might flip the pages of life as shortly as anyone.” Kyle Strober, government director of the Affiliation for a Higher Lengthy Island, known as Wilbur a “titan of Lengthy Island growth.”
He donated thousands and thousands to Hofstra College and the St. Francis Hospital & Coronary heart Heart, amongst different philanthropic causes. For good measure, he additionally wrote a 700-page memoir, titled “For Go-Getters Solely.”
Breslin is survived by his spouse, Dorothy, two youngsters and their spouses, six grandchildren and 7 great-grandchildren.
Learn extra
Mall titan David Simon dies at 64
Breslin’s transit-oriented development advances in Long Island hamlet
‘The Mooch’ buys in Manhasset, Christie Brinkley sells in Sag Harbor and more Hamptons & Long Island real estate news
