Building a dream, from the ground up

A 16-year-old left Greece with nothing, headed to U.S. shores. Decades later, he has his own thriving development company.

By LEON M. TUCKER, Times Staff Writer
© St. Petersburg Times
published April 14, 2003

DUNEDIN -- When the S.S. Nea Hellas shoved off from the docks of Pireas Harbor in Greece almost 51 years ago, 16-year-old William Touloumis stood on the deck waving at his relatives.

A few days earlier he had said goodbye to his three brothers in his home town of Elassona in central Greece.

As the ocean liner steamed out to sea and his family faded into the horizon, the boy began to cry.

"The picture of never knowing when I would see Greece ever again filled me with a certain sadness," said Touloumis, now 67.

"But there were a lot of immigrants coming from Greece," he added. "So I found friends, and soon I forgot the sadness -- from that point I was looking forward to my new home."

Now, half a century after leaving an impoverished, post-World War II Greece for the steamy kitchens and factories of Chicago, Touloumis is living the American dream as a successful commercial developer in Pinellas County.

"This dream provided myself with the strength and the resolve not only to succeed but to appreciate the opportunity," he said in his native accent. "This will be a journey that never ends."

A former chief architect for the Walgreens drugstore chain of Illinois, Touloumis started Olympia Development Group Inc. in 1991. He has since designed and developed more than 100 of the company's stores as well as scores of office buildings and restaurants throughout Florida and Georgia.

In Oldsmar, the company is in the middle of developing nearly 9 acres along Tampa Road that it purchased in 1997. So far a Walgreens, Dunkin' Donuts and Chick Fil-A restaurant have been built on the site.

A Sonic restaurant, an 18,000-square-foot office building and a strip center are also in the works there. The entire project is expected to be completed by spring 2004.

Meanwhile in Dunedin, Touloumis is working on a 30,000-square-foot office complex called Olympia Center II, which will be built near the corner of SR 580 and Keene Road.

A two-story structure, Olympia II is designed to almost mirror the nearby Olympia Center -- a one-story 14,000-square-foot structure Touloumis built in 1999 for $1.6-million. Initially the Olympia Center was to house Touloumis' operation, but he later leased portions of it to other businesses.

The proposed $3.2-million Olympia II project is still in the planning stages but is also expected to be completed by spring 2004.

Since 1998 Olympia has invested $7.9-million in other parcels at the corner of Keene and SR 580 for the construction of Hollywood Video, Bank of America, Walgreens and Medical Associates of Pinellas buildings.

Olympia owns the buildings and leases them to tenants.

This year Touloumis expects Olympia to bring in $25-million to $30-million in development work -- a long way from the $13 a week he brought home from his first job.

The hunger

It was June 1952 when Touloumis first arrived in America.

He landed in New York wearing shorts and sandals and carrying all his possessions in a single wooden suitcase. Speaking almost no English, he asked a family friend who greeted him in New York for food.

A loaf of bread, feta cheese and grapes would be his first meal in his new home.

While living with his aunt, Maria Eliopoulos, in Chicago's Maywood suburbs, Touloumis cleaned tables and washed dishes at the National Cafeteria in the then-seedy South Loop neighborhood.

The long hours, hard work and unruly patrons at the cafe at times were seemingly unbearable, but quitting and moving back to Greece was not an option.

"I was the only hope for my mother and my three brothers," Touloumis said. "So for me to write to them that I was coming back, it was like a terminal illness -- no hope."

He worked nine hours a day, seven days a week and after two years had managed to save $1,300 -- enough to pay for his mother and three brothers to join him in America.

Touloumis reunited with his mother, Athena, and brothers George, John and Frank in 1954. The five of them lived in a small two-bedroom, second-story apartment at 1234 S Western Ave., a far cry from the one-room house the family shared in Elassona, when Touloumis' father, Stathy Touloumis, was alive.

Early on, Stathy Touloumis' work as a civil engineer provided the family with a comfortable lifestyle. But World War II ripped the country and families apart. He died in 1948 from a brain embolism.

Soon after the family's arrival in America, Athena Touloumis began working in the Campbell's Soup factory cleaning chickens and peeling vegetables. William and George each earned $34 a week at their new jobs at the Handy Button Factory.

John and Frank were too young to work and went to school full time.

Eventually, young William learned to speak English and went back to high school, but he did not finish.

Instead, he took an entrance exam and was accepted at Wright Junior College in Chicago.

While he attended Wright, Touloumis worked the 11 p.m. to 7 a.m. shift at the Hotpoint appliance factory and went to school after work.

"How did I study?" he said with a tinge of mystery in his voice. "I made a deal with the foreman that if I did my work in a short time I could study during the rest of my shift."

It was after Touloumis started attending classes at the Illinois Institute of Technology that his life changed.

There he attended lectures by architect Frank Lloyd Wright, who is famous for -- among other things -- designing the celebrated Guggenheim Museum in New York.

"I was so impressed and moved that I decided this is what I wanted to become," he said. "An architect."

Lessons in success

In 1959 Touloumis enrolled in the University of Illinois, where he studied architecture. Again he dropped out -- this time while nine credits short of receiving a bachelor's degree -- to marry. Soon he had a son, Stathy.

But the marriage didn't last, and after working a series of design jobs, Touloumis realized he needed a degree. Eight years later he went back to school, and he received his bachelor's in architecture in 1969.

After traveling Europe and earning a master's degree in architecture, he opened an architecture and design firm. In 1979 he was hired by Walgreens as senior architect, managing the company's food division. He was soon promoted to oversee the design of the chain's Wags restaurants and its drugstores.

Ten years and dozens of building designs later, he was a registered architect in almost 30 states and had supervised the design and construction of many of the company's stores and restaurants.

It was time to move on.

So armed with a solid business relationship with Walgreens, Touloumis started Olympia Development in 1991 and continued to design the corporation's stores as well as taking on work from other companies.

And in addition to the long line of developments Olympia has been responsible for, the company is in the process of building a luxury 54-lot subdivision on 60 acres at the top of Lost Mountain near Atlanta.

Through it all, Touloumis attributes his success to one thing -- lasting relationships. "Through this journey, from the time I was a boy until today, I've met so many people of different cultures and racial backgrounds," he said. "One of the things I've learned is we should appreciate others.

"When each and everyone is like that, then this world becomes a brotherhood -- from one person to another."

-- Leon M. Tucker can be reached at 445-4167 or tucker@sptimes.com .

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