Even during his 35-year career as an Italian racecar driver, Alessandro Zampedri always knew he wanted to shift into real estate at some point.
After a journey that took him from Italy to the Indy 500 and across the world racing Porsches, the 53-year-old worked as a developer on projects from coast to coast in the United States. For his latest project, he’s working on a pair of luxury villas in the eastern Long Island town of Montauk that could break records for the fishing village-turned-elite vacation hamlet.
The project — dubbed “The Maple Villas” — is aiming high. The villas designed by the famed Italian architectural firm Lissoni Casal Ribeiro and built by Walker Ridge are listed for $18.5 million and $19.5 million by Kyle Rokso and Marcy Braun of the Eklund Gomes Team at Douglas Elliman. If the homes fetch their asking prices, they’d be the most expensive non-waterfront homes in the town. The current record-holder is a six-bedroom mansion that sold for $14 million in 2022.
That ambition and competitive spirit took hold for Zampedri at an early age.
The Starting Line
Zampedri started racing cars when he was just 12 years old in his hometown of Brescia, Italy. His racing career led him to the 1995, 1996 and 1997 Indy 500s. In the 1996 race, he suffered serious leg injuries in a crash on the final lap, dislocating his ankles and losing three toes. But against all odds, he qualified again for the Indy 500 the very next year.
“People say, ‘He’s history; he’s not going to be able to drive a car again, or if he does, it’s not going to be fast.’ All kinds of things. But I don’t care what people say. I know what I want to do and where I want to go,” he told The Washington Post in 1997. He went on to win fourth place.
After the Indy 500 that year, Zampedri raced Porsches for the next decade and a half and won the 2005 Porsche Supercup. Then, he moved to New York City to start his real estate career.
“I wanted to have the opportunity to work with famous architects, on amazing projects and in collaboration with the best developers. The dream to work in NYC was big, and I decided to move [to] NYC and start to work in this extraordinary market,” Zampedri told Italiany in a past interview.
A Passion for Design
Zampedri’s New York-based firm CFF completed its first real estate project, the “flophouse-chic” Bowery House, in 2011. Zampedri told media outlets at the time that the cheap stay was a cross between a hotel and hostel, and it was noted for its luxury items like Ralph Lauren towels despite its hard-to-come-by low prices.
“I always had a passion for design, architecture, real estate,” Zampedri told The Messenger.
Zampedri’s conversion of the 1950s California motel the Surfrider Malibu opened in 2017 to much fanfare and won awards from publisher Condé Nast. The boutique hotel is “a place for travelers rather than tourists, for the person seeking the local experience, a taste of the elusive California dream,” one of its owners Emma Crowther told The New York Times in 2018.
But the developer doesn’t just work on hotels. In 2013, he launched the former restaurant in downtown Manhattan called Pearl & Ash, an idea that was pitched to him by employees, Richard Kuo and Branden McRill of the Bowery House, who he later made his partners. “I think he realized that we were going to put time into it, and he asked us if we wanted to be his partners in the restaurant,” McRill told food magazine Eater NY at the time. McRill and Zampedri went on to launched another restaurant, the Michelin-starred Rebelle, on the Lower East Side a few years later. The Bowery House and both restaurants are now closed.
But that hasn’t stopped Zampedri. In addition to his new project in Montauk, Zampedri’s real estate portfolio also includes a 22-townhouse project in Brooklyn and an Upper East Side store for an Italian fashion designer.
Very Connected to Montauk
Zampedri has “quietly become the arbiter of modern architecture in Montauk,” said a Douglas Elliman spokesperson.
Zampedri’s pair of luxury homes with 180-degree ocean views, which he is co-developing with JK Living, will undoubtedly draw the attention of well-to-do tourists looking for a summer (or year-round) home. The six-bedroom houses each include a heated pool, gym, theater, steam and sauna room, two kitchens and a rooftop deck. The villas have “floor to ceiling frameless glass windows in nearly every room,” according to the listings. Each home is 9,000 square feet and sits on about one acre of land.
The villas, like most of Zampedri’s projects, are equal parts New York and Italian.
“I chose colors, materials, textures and everything that were very connected Montauk,” said Zampedri. “But with Italian style attached to it.” Montauk, a fishing village dating back to the late 1800s, has increasingly drawn wealthy and famous summer vacationers since the early 2000s. Miguel Ribeiro, a partner of Lissoni Casal Ribeiro who worked on the villas, agreed that the home has a “Montauk spirit” to compliment its European style.
“You feel like you’re sitting on the top of a small forest, and then you see the ocean,” Zampedri said, “You hear the waves.”
Ribeiro remembers when Zampedri approached him about the project at the firm’s office in Milan. “It was the first time I met him. We sat down, and I could feel the energy that Alessandro has — the drive, the determination that he had.”
The developer is a self-described “maniac about details” involving himself in the tiniest of elements down to the positioning of light switches — something Ribeiro can confirm. The architect said he worked with Zampedri on every aspect of the design. He recalls how Zampedri was particular about optimizing every detail of the space for its future residents — crafting the most convenient exit from the living room to the pool, maximizing lounge space on the rooftop terraces, creating the two kitchens (one for residents, and one, of course, for their chef).
Uniquely, one of the homes, 22 Maple, was designed as “an upside down villa,” said Ribeiro, meaning its bedrooms sit on the first floor while its living room is on the higher level. That’s because the designer and Zampedri wanted to guarantee shared access to ocean views given the site’s lower topography — transforming what could have been a negative factor into a unique selling point.
“If we think about putting the living room on the top and using the roof as a second garden, then all of a sudden, this villa has something unique to sell,” said Ribeiro.
For Zampedri these days, the finish line is elusive as he looks forward to many more records, and stunning new projects — a racer at heart never fond of tapping the brakes.
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