5 Questions With Palm Beach County Developer Dan Catalfumo

Dan Catalfumo, a longtime developer in Palm Beach County, Fla., has been building a variety of projects in Palm Beach Gardens.

Catalfumo Companies recently put the roof on the Ritz-Carlton Residences, a luxury condominium complex on a 14-acre parcel at 2200 PGA Boulevard in Palm Beach Gardens. Elsewhere in the city, he’s developing office space and 620 apartments.

The following conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Commercial Observer: Who’s the target market for the Ritz-Carlton Residences?

Dan Catalfumo: Units start at $4.5 million and go to $10 million. The average is around $7 million, $7.5 million. About half of the buyers are local, moving from large estate homes. They want to travel and turn in the key and leave. The other half are migrating to South Florida. 

Palm Beach Gardens is the golf capital of the world. By living at our project, they can join different courses. The best part about not being in a golf course community is you don’t have to see the same people every night.  

You’ll finish up the Ritz-Carlton project in 2026. What’s next?

We’ll focus back into our office park. We’ve got all of our zoning. We’ve got a 200,000-square-foot office building. There’s still a demand for office space in Palm Beach Gardens — there are so many companies moving here. 

Then we’re starting on 620 apartment units. We’ll be breaking ground in 2025. We’re lucky people still want to move here.

What’s your biggest challenge?

Finding good-quality, seasoned help. We call “seasoned” someone who is 50 or 60 years old and understands how a building is built by touching the plan on a piece of paper, and not leaning on a computer all the time. Buildings are built by people with passion, and by people who walk the site and touch the rebar. Computers don’t build buildings, people do.

Recruiting is an industrywide challenge. How are you addressing it?

We ask people if they’re looking for a job or looking for a family. If they want a family, this is the place. 

Every morning, I spend the first 25 minutes of my day walking into everyone’s office and saying, “Hi.” Once a month, I give everyone three-pound tomahawk steaks. It’s a big, 5-inch-thick steak. It forces people to do something with their family. They actually take pictures of how they cook their massive steaks. They cost probably $125 apiece, and we pass out probably 30 steaks. I also do that for special subcontractors every couple of months. 

If I gave you a $100 bill, you’d forget about it tomorrow. But if I give you a steak, everybody remembers — everyone in the family is asking, “When are we getting steak again?”

How is the tariff tango affecting you?

We have ships in the water. All of our tiles and cabinetry are on ships as we speak. We won’t have to deal with any tariffs, as of President Trump’s announcement [April 9].

Jeff Ostrowski can be reached at jostrowski@commercialobserver.com.