Canberra property developer Renato Cervo, who played a major role in developing land for shopping centres around the city, sparking controversy along the way, has died aged 89.
The bricklayer turned developer died on Christmas Eve and a requiem mass at St Christopher's Cathedral in Forrest is scheduled for Mr Cervo on Thursday.
Mr Cervo became well known through his various developments over the decades, some of which put him in conflict with residents due to delays in openings.
Most recently, a shopping centre in Coombs developed by Mr Cervo was left empty for nearly four years after it was built.
Initially Mr Cervo hoped to open the centre in mid-2016 but faced construction delays due to two rejected development applications and a stop-work order when building commenced without approval.
Work was eventually completed by 2018 however angry residents petitioned the government to force Mr Cervo to secure a tenant and open the centre as it remained empty.
Ajijo Grocer became the sole operator from 2019 and for almost three and a half years no other shops arrived, until September 2022 when the conflict was resolved and it started to fill with tenants.
This was not the first series of properties Mr Cervo obtained, as he was well-known throughout the Canberra property scene for decades.
In the 1980s he was involved in a legal row with adult store Club X, a tenant of his Belconnen retail property. He tried to evict them after protests by people concerned about the shop.
Legendary Canberra real estate agent Peter Blackshaw had a number of interactions with Mr Cervo when the developer bid on property.
"He was a character," Mr Blackshaw said.
Property developer and chief executive of Liebke & Co, Rowan Liebke, said Mr Cervo was a complex man from a difficult background.
"He did it hard because obviously he was a tradie and then he's come up and built a very large asset portfolio and he got burnt many times, as all of us do," Mr Liebke said.
"It's not easy to grow and be financially successful, but he got very hard and [difficult to deal with]."
Mr Cervo's beginnings as a tradie never left him, as Mr Liebke reflected how the late developer conducted himself around modern offices.
"He had a lot of commercial property that he had built with his own hands," Mr Liebke said.
"He'd get around the solicitor's building with a torn black shirt looking like ... they needed security to get him out of the building, like 'What's this homeless guy doing?'
"Many times I'd bump into him at our office and he would have a torn black shirt and just sort of dirty shorts on and no one would know he was such a large asset owner."
Bill Lyrisakis, a licenced agent of Berkely Residential, also dealt with Mr Cervo and described his time with the late property developer as "very amicable".
"Having sold him property over the past 25 years, I always found him a highly intelligent and a seasoned negotiator. I was very saddened to hear of his passing," Mr Lyrisakis said.
The petrol station in Amaroo was another of Mr Cervo's notable investments. He installed five 55,000-litre fuel tanks on the 2810-square-metre site in April 2006.
However, by March 2008, the service station had not opened and Mr Cervo claimed he would never have built it if he had known a Shell Coles Express outlet was being built in the same area.
Beyond his career as a property developer, Mr Cervo also wrote multiple letters to the editor for The Canberra Times on a broad range of topics including that Prince William should have cancelled his trip to Australia and helped people in Haiti after the 2010 earthquake, a suggestion to anoint former prime minister John Howard as Australia's first president, and calling for an end to the Iraq war.
In Mr Cervo's death notice, a message conveys he was the beloved husband of Margaret and loving father of Gina.
CORRECTION: Developer Renato Cervo was 89 at the time of his death, not 99 as reported on Wednesday. The error was based on information supplied.
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