Peter Cocoziello

Peter Coco­ziello, Sr. is a first gen­er­a­tion Ital­ian, born and raised in Mont­clair, New Jer­sey. He was born dur­ing the Great Depres­sion to immi­grant par­ents from south­ern Italy. He worked hard tak­ing odd jobs after school, sell­ing mag­a­zines door to door, in a Ger­man Bak­ery, on the week­ends, in his dad’s butcher shop. He gave all he earned to his mother to help with fam­ily expenses. After high school, in 1941, he joined the Navy and was assigned to the USS Casco, an avi­a­tion ten­der and sig­nal ship, oper­at­ing in the Pacific the­ater dur­ing World War II. He was dis­charged in 1945.

Mr. Coco­ziello, in 1956, founded a con­struc­tion and home improve­ment com­pany, All State Con­trac­tors, Inc. in the city of East Orange. Here he became the first alu­minum sid­ing con­trac­tor in the state. When win­ter set in, he kept his work­ers busy by con­vert­ing single-family homes into two fam­ily homes in dual fam­ily zones.

Con­sult Realty, Inc., estab­lished by Peter in 1972 as a prop­erty devel­op­ment and com­mer­cial realty com­pany that grew over three decades into a busi­ness with con­sid­er­able hold­ings. Con­sult Realty dis­tin­guishes itself in the areas of real estate invest­ment, build­ing and finance con­sult­ing, plan­ning and development.

The foun­da­tion upon which Mr. Coco­ziello built his suc­cess is a com­bi­na­tion of per­se­ver­ance, inno­va­tion and the remark­able abil­ity to adapt to the muta­tions and chang­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties of the marketplace.

While these achieve­ments reflect Mr. Cocoziello’s expe­ri­ence and tal­ent, it is his will­ing­ness to work with edu­ca­tional and char­i­ta­ble orga­ni­za­tions in need that has made him an hon­ored part­ner of the Cen­ter. He has been and is a bene­fac­tor to the Amer­i­can Vet­er­ans of War, Boys Town of Italy, the United Negro Col­lege Fund, St. John’s Church of Newark, the Amer­i­can Jew­ish Fed­er­a­tion, the Asso­ci­a­tion for Retarded Cit­i­zens and other organizations.

His suc­cess has afforded him the oppor­tu­nity to estab­lish the Peter Coco­ziello Edu­ca­tional Endowed Schol­ar­ship for the Italian-American stu­dents who seek finan­cial support.

Peter has two sons, Peter Jr. and Paul, and a daugh­ter, Maryann, seven grand­chil­dren and a great grandson.