“My father had a vision, he saw what was needed and just worked to make it happen,”

The Early Years

In the 1980’s Ed O’Leary and Ray Vincunas owned and operated The O’Leary Company, a Butler building general contractor in Southampton, MA. While primarily constructing over 500 buildings for businesses of all kinds, at times they took the opportunity to develop a building for a company that wanted to lease space. This included a US Post Office, 6 TruGreen/Chemlawn facilities, 2 Kindercare child care centers, 2 New England Telephone [now Verizon] operation centers, and even a high-tech startup from UMass called Millitech.

Making It Real

With these successes, they sold the O’Leary Company in order to focus on adding to their real estate portfolio, diversifying into multi-tenant industrial facilities, warehouse/distribution buildings, and others. By 1988 it became clear they needed someone to take over the management of the properties fulltime as Ed and Ray looked toward a well-earned retirement. In 1988 Ken Vincunas joined the company, and began to run the operation with just a 20-hour per week bookkeeper, managing the properties and tenants, leasing the spaces, and looking for opportunity.

The Next Phase

For the next few years, Ed, Ray and Ken worked together to build the business, adding a variety of commercial/industrial buildings in Agawam, South Deerfield, Palmer, Greenfield, Chicopee, and Enfield. Ed and Ray felt it was time to retire and began to spend winters in Florida and enjoying lots of traveling. From the 1990’s Ken continued to grow the holdings and the business, adding a construction supervisor, an experienced operations manager, a full-time bookkeeper, and a person for front desk reception and office administration. Ray Vincunas died in December 2001, highly-regarded as a smart, honest businessman, a self-made success with many good friends. Ed O’Leary has since been in retirement, spending time with his grandchildren, great grandchildren and his daughters Susan, Eileen, and Carol. Since Ed’s retirement; Susan and Eileen have become active partners of Development Associates and have picked up where their father has left off.

Here We Are
Today, the Development Associates team continues to grow its reputation and portfolio with its many partners and business relationships. Recently, Development Associates completed the third landmark 3-story medical/office building on Atwood Drive just off Interstate 91 in Northampton, MA, and purchased a 55,000 square foot office building near Bradley Airport. In addition, we are working on permitting for two new major building projects. Development Associates now owns/manages over 50 buildings in the region, with well over 2,000,000 square feet of space more than 100 tenants, and we continue to look for opportunities to provide quality real estate solutions to meet any company’s needs.