Former Fortress exec launches RE firm

Vincent Signorello, the former president of a Fortress Investment Group-owned firm, has launched his own business, he told PERE.

The Miami-based venture, so far without a public name, will invest across property types with institutional capital, starting in Florida. Signorello said he could not yet disclose the senior leadership team.

For the last nine years, Signorello was the president of Florida East Coast Industries. The Coral Gables, Florida-based holding company, purchased by New York’s Fortress Investment Group in 2007, invests in infrastructure, logistics and real estate. The company is known for building Brightline, a private train line that will connect Orlando and Miami upon its completion in 2019.

Signorello’s new company will focus on infrastructure-linked real estate projects, such as industrial real estate near ports and airports, and office, retail and multifamily along transportation nodes. He plans to begin investing in Florida through separate accounts with institutional investors such as endowments and insurance companies, and then expand to the southeast, potentially with a commingled fund.

“Florida is very quickly transitioning away from the place you go at the end of your career to the place where people are going to create their career,” Signorello told PERE. “It’s a really interesting moment in time to make strategic investments in Florida.”

Prior to his time at FECI, Signorello worked at Fortress’s private equity group in New York for a year and earlier as an executive director at Barclays’ commercial real estate group, according to his LinkedIn profile. He started his career in real estate investing banking at Lehman Brothers.

“Everything that I intend to do with the platform really leans on my recent history as an operator, which involved significant capital raising, capital deployment and asset development across a wide range of property types and the full investment lifecycle,” Signorello said. “It also leans back onto my experience in the capital markets.”