history: tradition + inspiration

For as long as the shopping center has defined retail marketing in America, the Visconsi name has been associated with the way we do our shopping. In the mid-1920s Anthoni Visconsi, a former bricklayer, realized that the proliferation of the automobile would have a profound impact on the way America lived.

Visconsi’s ingenuity inspired him to respond to this new-found mobility by creating suburban shopping centers with ample off-street parking. These days it’s an obvious notion; but at the time, many people still did their shopping in downtown business districts where parking was difficult to find or by walking to neighborhood stores.

Anthoni Visconsi’s early developments – multiple storefront buildings set back from the street to allow head-in parking – pioneered the development of what we now recognize as community shopping centers and regional malls. Anthoni’s son, Dominic, later expanded upon his father’s business ideas, ultimately forming a partnership that would grow to become the nation’s fifth largest developer of shopping malls, known as Jacobs, Visconsi & Jacobs Co.

The same kind of innovative problem solving that led Anthoni Visconsi to create his shopping centers lives on in Visconsi Companies, Ltd. Now run by his grandsons, Anthoni II and Dominic Jr., and joined by great-grandson Anthoni III, they carry on the tradition of originality in the development and management of real estate properties.