[Congressional Record Volume 158, Number 149 (Tuesday, November 27, 2012)]
[Senate]
[Pages S6940-S6942]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
VERMONT'S CITIZEN OF THE YEAR, ANTONIO POMERLEAU
Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, today, the Vermont Chamber of Commerce will
recognize the philanthropic contributions of a longtime Vermonter:
Antonio Pomerleau. Businessman, community developer, humanitarian all
these terms apply to one of Vermont's most celebrated citizens. As I
said in a statement to the Senate earlier this month, Marcelle and I
are also fortunate to call him family.
But Tony's family extends beyond the Pomerleaus. It has come to
encompass the State of Vermont, and his generosity has touched the
lives of thousands of Vermonters.
This weekend, The Burlington Free Press published a story about
Tony's legacy. His is a quintessential success story. From stockboy to
economic magnet, Tony has become one of Vermont's most prominent
businessmen. Along the way, he has donated millions of his own money to
help Vermonters recover in the wake of such natural disasters as
Tropical Storm Irene, to help renovate and restore mobile home parks
for residents, and, notably, to celebrate the contributions and
sacrifices of the many members of the Vermont National Guard and their
families.
Few Vermonters have had such a footprint on Vermont's economic and
social landscape. Antonio Pomerleau's contributions make him a
Vermonter of the Year in 2012, but his legacy will benefit generations
of Vermonters to come.
I ask unanimous consent that The Burlington Free Press article,
``Tony Pomerleau: The Art of the Dealmaker,'' be printed in the Record.
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in
the Record, as follows:
[The Burlington Free Press, Nov. 25, 2012]
Tony Pomerleau: The Art of the Dealmaker
(By Candace Page)
Newport--Tony Pomerleau leans on his cane and steps into
Mill River Furniture on Main Street, just in time for its
grand opening ceremony. A dozen people converge on him,
filings drawn to a magnet.
The mayor greets him. City councilors introduce themselves.
Two local reporters quiz him about the fate of the city's
only grocery store if plans go forward to redevelop his strip
mall into a hotel and convention center. The head of the
downtown association calls him over for a ribbon-cutting
photo. ``We need you Tony, right in the middle,'' she says.
The 95-year-old, white-maned shopping center king of
Vermont is in his element, back in his native town with a
captive audience. He holds court for nearly an hour while the
furniture store owner whose event this is left in the
background.
``I was 12 when I started work here,'' Pomerleau begins by
recalling his days as a stockboy and window dresser when this
building was a J.J. Newberry's five-and-dime. ``I had a knack
for windows. This is where I started my success. I learned
the customer has to see the merchandise if you want to
sell.''
Today, he owns the building. ``I put $400,000 into it to
fix it up,'' he says, his words carrying the French-Canadian
inflection he has never lost.
He jokes that store owner Skip Gray was ``kinda chicken''
about moving to Main Street from a much smaller store in the
Pomerleau shopping center. His eyes sparkle. He laughs along
with the audience at his own jokes.
In a voice graveled by age, he detours into stories that
have become his stock in trade. The anecdotes reel off as if
from a tape recorder, told and retold in almost exactly the
same words.
``It's not what you pay for something, it's what you can
get for it,'' he tells the cluster of people, citing a real
estate deal 40 years in the past. ``I made $237,000 in 90
days'' he says of a tract of farmland bought, subdivided and
sold for three times what he paid.
He laments the just-announced closing of the Eveready
battery plant in St. Albans. The company's problem, he says
with finality, is that they didn't change with the times by
developing new products.
``You gotta do something different from the other fellow,''
he says. ``There's a time limit on everything--except me.''
The line draws a chuckle from his clutch of listeners, as it
always does.
Grace, the youngest of Pomerleau's 10 children, glances up
from browsing among bedroom sets.
``He does love an audience,'' she says.
`See the smoke coming out?'
On a late November night, the outside of Pomerleau's big
house on DeForest Heights in Burlington is a neon carnival of
Christmas.
Light-bulb-lit reindeer charge across the west lawn pulling
a sleigh of presents. Shoulder-high candy canes stick from
the north lawn. Christmas lights cling to the eaves and
swathe the trees in all directions.
Pomerleau opens the door for guests and pads down a hallway
in his slippers to point through the windows of his home
office.
``That's a new one this year,'' he says with childlike
pleasure, pointing to a lighted train on the north lawn.
``See, the wheels go around,'' he says, as lights on the
train blink to mimic movement. ``See the smoke coming out
there. Isn't that cute?'' More lights blink.
As a very young child, Pomerleau spent four or five years--
the time varies in the telling--in a kind of iron corset
after a bad fall when he was two. His father's Barton farm
burned. The family moved to Newport. The Depression struck.
His father's grocery burned.
In his telling, young Tony went to work barely out of
elementary school, making deals, subcontracting the mowing of
lawns and washing of cars to other kids or out-of-work men
and taking a hefty cut of the pay.
His stories of childhood Christmases are happy ones, of
horses and sleighs lined up outside the church for midnight
Mass, the bells as the sleighs jingled home, the sound of
carols.
But there is another memory as well. He walks into the
living rooms and leans against the piano, its top invisible
under the rows of photos of his children.
``I was 12 or 13. One day I heard my father say to my
mother, `This is the first Christmas I can't afford any
presents.' I went down to the bank and took out $25--that was
money in those days--to give him.''
``I came from nothing,'' he often says, setting the
backdrop for stories of his successes.
[[Page S6941]]
The big living room where an army of kids once played seems
empty on a pre-Thanksgiving evening. Country station WOKO
plays loudly on the radio.
In the kitchen, an aide is helping Pomerleau's 93-year-old
wife, Rita, with her dinner. Alzheimer's disease has slowly
claimed her.
``It's the worst damn disease,'' he says. She speaks very
little, but still holds his hand and kisses him, he says.
``Come back tomorrow night,'' he says as he ushers out his
visitors. ``We're putting up more lights. It's going to look
even better.''
`This business doesn't happen by itself'
Antonio B. Pomerleau made his first million before he was
45 and has made millions more since. His supermarket-anchored
strip malls dot nearly two dozen towns in Vermont and upstate
New York. He and his son Ernie have a staff of 25 to help run
their real estate businesses.
But here is the patriarch, spending a sunny November
afternoon in the artificial light of a windowless Newport
bowling alley two hours drive from his Burlington home,
talking intently and at length to a tenant whose lease
payment cannot amount to more than loose change in the
Pomerleau business.
There are gumball machines along the wall, a Nascar-themed
light over the pool table and an echoing feel to the place. A
lone father and son hurl heavy balls down one of the 10
lanes.
``How's it going?'' Pomerleau asks as he lowers himself
carefully into a plastic chair beside a row of bowling balls.
``About like last year,'' Yvan Parenteau, the alley's
owner, says.
``That wasn't too good,'' Pomerleau says.
In fact, the business is struggling. Parenteau has trouble
making the rent. He is worried about his fate if the mall is
converted to a convention center. Pomerleau makes no
promises, only says no deal has been signed yet. ``I never
skin a bear until I've shot it,'' he's been telling everyone
he meets today.
After an hour, Pomerleau pushes himself up and says
goodbye. He climbs into his Mercedes for the trip back to
Burlington.
``Now you see my life. This business doesn't happen by
itself,'' he says of his real estate empire.
He lists communities where bowling alleys, some of which he
built, have closed. Changing times, he says. He has adjusted
Parenteau's rent, allowing him to pay more in the winter,
less in summer. He has suggested prize-giving gimmicks to
draw in customers, and arranged for the bowling alley to have
a more prominent sign on the road. Later, Parenteau will say
of Pomerleau, ``You couldn't have a better landlord.''
Still, Pomerleau says, ``If he can't pay the rent, he won't
be here next year.''
`I'm the boss'
A stairlift descends almost noiselessly from the third
floor at Follett House, the elegant 19th-century Burlington
mansion the Pomerleaus saved and restored as their offices.
Tony Pomerleau climbs off the lift, which he has used since a
knee injury.
``Hello, hello, hello,'' he greets a visitor and leads the
way into his office. He is surrounded by signs of success,
from the million-dollar view of Lake Champlain outside the
window, to the picture of himself with President Reagan.
He rises each day, puts on a suit and tie and goes to the
office. He takes business calls over breakfast and into the
dinner hour.
The Pomerleau family owns shopping centers in 18 Vermont
communities and four in New York. Most are strip malls
anchored by a supermarket. They are small by comparison with
a University Mall or the Williston big-box stores.
Pomerleau's single largest holding is the Shelburne Road
Plaza in Burlington, valued at $14.6 million.
``What the hell would I want a mall for?'' he says. ``I
make a lot of money the way I do things.''
He spotted the attraction of shopping malls early,
understood the importance of location, pinched pennies,
negotiated hard with his lenders, gave up higher rents for a
percentage of a store's gross.
He has transferred ownership of many of his holdings to his
children, about $50 million worth, he says. Ernie Pomerleau,
65, runs the day-to-day operations of the family businesses
and does many of his own deals.
So what is the elder Pomerleau's role?
``I'm the boss,'' Tony Pomerleau insists. ``I'm doing deals
every day . . . moving that furniture store to Main Street in
Newport. I got the Merchants Bank moving into my building in
South Burlington . . . lots of deals.''
His speech occasionally stutters. ``And and and so so so .
. .'' he growls. It's not clear whether he's lost his train
of thought, or is simply determined to hold the floor until
he's ready for the next sentence.
He still calculates dollars and cents in his head and
appears never to have forgotten a number.
``Now Price Chopper,'' he begins, and outlines precisely
what the CEO of the grocery chain expected to gross at a new
store in Champlain, N. Y., and what Pomerleau told him he
would gross--and just how wrong Price Chopper was and just
how right Tony Pomerleau was: many million dollars right--
``but don't put that in the paper,'' he says of the exact
figure he names. ``Price Chopper wouldn't like it.''
``I make more money today than I ever made in my life, and
I don't need it. I give it away,'' he says. ``I'm not old,
I'm here every day making all kinds of deals. Everybody has a
time limit--except me.''
No regrets, no failures, no mistakes
It is a long drive from Burlington to Newport and back.
Grace drives, but her father is in control.
``Turn here,'' he says. As the miles pass by: ``Don't go
that way . . . go this way . . . don't miss the turn . . .
keep going, I'll show you where to stop.''
It's a long enough trip for dozens of familiar anecdotes
starring Tony Pomerleau: The ``$237,000 profit in 90 days''
story. The ``I probably opened the first self-service
supermarket in the country'' story. The ``how I beat two
sharp guys from Boston in a real estate deal and made a
couple million'' story.
The car passes White's Tree Farm on Vermont 15 in Essex.
Hundreds of tiny Christmas trees grow in long rows.
``There's a guy looking 20 years ahead,'' he says and notes
that he recently bought 18 acres across from the family's
expanding shopping center in Milton. Sometime in the future
``it'll be worth two, three times what I paid.''
``There's a time limit on everything--except me,'' he says.
A reporter, probing, asks about him about failures, deals
that didn't work out.
``I don't remember any,'' he says. Earlier, it was
suggested that his proposal for high rises on the Burlington
waterfront--rejected by the city in the early 1980s--might be
considered a failure. He brushed the thought aside.
Big regrets in his 95 years?
``No regrets,'' he says.
His biggest mistake?
There is a long pause.
``The toughest was the wholesale business, but I made a
success of it,'' he says.
`I'm not quite as young as you'
It's 8:30 in the morning when Pomerleau walks into the
conference room at the Shelburne town offices. Town Manager
Paul Bohne and Selectman Al Gobeille stand up. They greet him
enthusiastically.
Around this town, Pomerleau is the hero of the moment. The
future of the little Shelburnewood mobile home park in the
center of town has been in limbo for nearly a decade as the
park's owner tried to sell.
Pomerleau stepped in earlier this year. His wife's two
caregivers live at Shelburnewood and asked him for advice.
They were worried about the future of their modest homes.
He decided to buy the mobile home park, replace the aging
and inadequate water and sewer lines and give the park it to
its residents. He will retain another six acres of the 18-
acre parcel for possible future development.
It is one of many acts of charitable giving that have
become a bigger part of what people know about Pomerleau.
There are the annual children's Christmas parties in
Burlington and Newport, the party for 1,200 Vermont National
Guardsmen and their spouses. There have been million-dollars
gifts to St. Michael's College, the YMCA and to a fund to
help mobile home residents rebuild after last year's tropical
storm.
He is scornful of businesspeople who, their fortunes made
in Vermont, move their official residence to Florida to avoid
higher taxes. ``It's wrong,'' he'll say. ``You made your
money here and Vermont needs you. I pay very big taxes and I
never complain.''
Now, he sits down with Bohne and Gobeille.
``First of all, I never went into a deal in my life knowing
I was going to lose money,'' he says. ``The main reason I'm
doing this, these people didn't know where the hell they were
going to go.''
He's in the driver's seat. He has agreed in principle to
give the town a right-of-way for a new road through the
Shelburnewood property. The town has a change in
configuration to suggest. Bohne and Gobeille deploy
arguments.
Pomerleau immediately makes clear he is not interested.
Making changes would mean a longer time line for getting the
project done.
``This would cause a lot of delay and I'm not quite as
young as you,'' he tells them.
``You've got another 10 years,'' Gobeille joshes.
``Oh no question, no question,'' Pomerleau says and changes
tack. ``No question your idea is good, but I don't want to do
it. I don't want to delay it for those people. It would kill
them.''
Bohne and Gobeille make one more pitch, then accept his
refusal and drop their proposal.
Pomerleau repeats his objections anyway, one last time.
``For me, I think I'd rather stay with my plan. I might
live another 10 years. Five, no question, but 10. . . .''
`Everybody has a time limit'
Pomerleau pushes open the gate in the wrought-iron fence
that surrounds the family plot at Resurrection Park Cemetery
in South Burlington. ``Plot'' seems an inadequate word for
this cemetery within a cemetery.
A colonnade of pointed cedars leads to a backless facade
modeled on a Greek temple, its columns also recalling those
at Follett House.
``I like columns,'' he says. He guides two visitors past
the statue of the Virgin Mary, past a bird bath, granite
planters, stone benches, all carefully swathed in plastic for
the winter. The flowers are beautiful in summer, he says.
``This was all my idea. I didn't ask anybody. Didn't want
them to tell me what to do,'' he says. He jokes, ``My kids
would probably put me in the woods.''
[[Page S6942]]
``This is my father here, and my mother,'' he says,
stopping by a row of five stones where he has moved the
bodies of his parents, an uncle and an aunt. In an opposite
line are the stones for the two daughters, Anne Marie and
Ellen, he lost to cancer.
``Go over there,'' he says, ``Look at that one.'' In a
little nook off the main lawn, sits a stone for Jay Lefebvre,
the family's housekeeper of 40 years.
``I told her before she died, you are part of the family,
you are going to be here with us,'' he says.
He walks slowly toward the line of columns that serves as a
dramatic backdrop. He climbs up three steps. Here, at the
head of the family, a bit above them all, a pair of massive,
polished slabs are set in the ground. Pomerleau's name is
carved on one, his wife's on the other.
The man who constantly jokes that St. Peter has forgotten
him has nevertheless prepared.
But Tony, one of his visitors asks, what about ``everybody
has a time limit--except me''?
``This is just in case,'' he says.
____________________