Building and Realty Institute of Westchester/Mid-Hudson Region to celebrate 70­th anniversary

Carmelo Milio, Trion Real Estate Management

New Rochelle, NY Turning 70 calls for celebration and the Building and Realty Institute of Westchester and the Mid-Hudson Region (BRI) is inviting members, colleagues, friends and community members to celebrate the occasion.

The BRI’s current president, Carmelo Milio, knows his tenure during this milestone year for the association is an honor.

“I am privileged to be president of the BRI on the occasion of its 70th anniversary,” Milio said. “It is my hope and my goal to keep the enthusiasm, energy and purpose of this great association on-going and growing.”

The organization, founded in 1946, is holding a birthday party at Glen Island Harbour Club on April 21^st from 6 to 10 p.m. The party will feature music, open bar, gourmet dinner stations and desserts.

BRI has a rich history. It was founded during the post-war boom in residential construction, when a group of Westchester home builders, contractors and suppliers formed the Homebuilders Association of Westchester and Putnam Counties. The new organization soon grew and became the Builders Institute of Westchester and Putnam Counties, Inc. With the introduction of state rent regulations for multifamily apartment buildings in the 1970’s, and the wave of apartment building conversions to cooperatives in the 1980’s and early 90’s, membership expanded to hundreds of landlords, coop and condo presidents and board members, sponsors and property managers.

“It is this great variety and diversity, this incomparable depth and breadth of membership, that gives the BRI its strength and potential for future growth,” said Albert Annunziata, BRI executive director.

“Our members, the people who drive this association and help keep it vibrant, come from both the construction side as well as the realty ownership and management side,” Annunziata said. “Our past president, Eric Abraham, is a builder-developer of housing. Our current president, Carmelo Milio, is a residential building owner and full-service professional property manager. These two young professionals—and many more like them--represent the future of this industry in Westchester County.”

Annunziata also cited his management team as superbly skilled and experienced. “Our associate executive director Jeff Hanley; our comptroller Jane Margaret Gill, office manager Margaret Telesco and our director of membership Margaret Collins, are the best, most talented co-workers and colleagues that an executive director could ever hope to have,” Annunziata said.

Annunziata also praised the circle of professionals who provide invaluable service to the BRI.

“We simply could not educate, inform, advise and advocate on behalf of our members effectively without the invaluable services of our chief counsel, Kenneth Finger; associate counsels Dorothy, Carl and Daniel Finger (Finger & Finger PC, White Plains); labor counsel Matthew Persanis; insurance managers Ken Fuirst, Jason Schiciano and Marc Spar (Levitt-Fuirst Associates, Ltd.); our legislative advocate, Glenn Riddell (The Riddell Group, Albany); Peter Scala (Shalik-Morris CPAs) and James O’Connor (JP Morgan Chase), our accounting and financial advisors; and Nat Parish (Parish & Weiner) and Richard Hyman, AICP (RH Planning/Consulting).

To purchase tickets and for more information on the event, go to: http://www.buildingandrealtyinstitute.org/eventsgala2016.html