LAST NOVEMBER, TONY ALESSANDRO, a window manufacturer from Queens, took his boat for an end-of-season spin on the East River. He rode past burned-out buildings, grasslands, and metal-sided homes. Then, suddenly, he saw it. There, between the Throgs Neck and Whitestone bridges, was a Miami Beach resort. Banks of white stucco condominiums, each with a bright-blue terrace and yellow awnings, overlooked a 500-foot dock and a white sand beach-well, actually, the beach was more of a dingy gray, but no matter. Alessandro decided to investigate. He docked his boat and within twenty minutes had bought two condominiums for a total of $600,000-in the Bronx. The location wasn't the only unusual aspect of the deal. The developer of White Beach, a 39 million real-estate gamble, was 22 years old.
    Billy Procida doesn't look like a developer of multi-million-dollar deals. He's now 23, but he still seems like a little boy. Five feet six inches is a generous estimate of his height. He has the smile of a kid who should have had braces but kicked and bit his way out of the orthodontist's office. When he puts his feet up on his desk, his socks show through the soles of his shoes. At fancy restaurants, he often asks his companions if they like caviar. "I do, too," he'll then say proudly-and wash down a Life Saver with white wine on the rocks.
    Nonetheless, in five years of business, Billy has managed to develop White Beach and a $25-million high rise on West 66th Street in Manhattan. He is about to start work on a $10-million complex in Lincoln Park, New Jersey, and one for $20million along the Bronx water front. And just two months ago, the city's Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD) named Billy the developer for the next stage of the Charlotte Street project in the South Bronx.
    Billy has a simple explanation for his success: "Donald Trump was my idol in high school," he says.
    I’VE NEVER READ A BOOK IN MY life," says Billy Procida. "Except one on real estate." He has never been to a museum or a concert. The only play he can remember seeing was Biloxi Blues, but he left at intermission. "I couldn't sit still that long." And while he loves movies, he watches only comedies. "Goonies was terrific, man. I don't want nothing serious." What about mysteries-Hitchcock, perhaps? Billy looks alarmed. "I got enough scary in my own life. Hey, I live and work in the Bronx, remember?"
    Billy always knew he'd be a developer. As top man on the real-estate ladder, the developer is the one who decides what and how to build. Billy's parents, Joseph and Dorothy Procida, were on the next rung down, owning a successful construction company-they built the Water Club and the River Cafe, among other things. The four Procida children were brought up (in Dumont, New Jersey) to work in the business. Mario, Billy, an, Joey were summer laborers from age thirteen on; Chrissie, the only daughter was answering the office phones in seventh grade.
    "But when we were growing up, me and Mario always swore we'd never do things the way my father did," Billy say "I mean, he came home every night pulling his hair out. Not 'cause he was doing his job right, but 'cause the developer, who had the money, wasn't paying him. So we decided to go into development. That way you're not the one who gets screwed."
    Mario, the eldest, decided to become an architect, and spent eight years in college and graduate school. Higher education was never part of Billy's plan. "No way I could get through college," he said "I wasn't so terrific in school. I was politely asked to leave Bergen Catholic. I managed to graduate Tenafly public, but I got D's 'cause I couldn't sit still."
    The day Billy graduated, his father said, "Willie, [his nickname for his son], we're going to buy you a piece of property. Then you're on your own." The property was in the Bronx--three and half acres along the East River.
    Included in the price of the land was previously drawn up plans for a building "A little $2.5-million job. Typical Bronx project s---," says Billy. "My father said 'I don't care what you want, that's what you're gonna build. 'We had one of our biggest fights over that." The plans were worth about $20,000. "My father drilled into me that you don't throw away an asset. Well, I threw it away. I had $40,000 new plans done, got rid of the old foundations, and spent another $30,000 on new foundations."

  The inspiration for the design of White Beach came during one of Mario's vacations from college. "One day me and Mario were having a good time," Bill says. "We were getting--for lack of a better word-very relaxed. And all of a sudden I get this crazy idea. I says, 'Mario, why not take the Mediterranean and put it here, in the Bronx?"'
    Having solved the issue of what he wanted to build, Billy then had to find financing. It hadn't occurred to him that this would be difficult. It took three years, though, to find a bank that would back the deal. "Most banks laughed me out the door just 'cause I was in the Bronx," Billy says. "They’d say, ‘What are you, crazy? My age was a problem, too. Chemical Bank--my family's been with them 25 years-and they says, 'Kid You're nuts.' They says, 'You can't sell condos for $250,000 in the Bronx."'
    Billy was discouraged, but he never doubted he would get a loan. "When you’re young, you're naive," he says, "You think everything's possible."
    MEANWHILE, BILLY KEPT working for his father. "I gave Willie a $2.5-million [construction] deal to run when he was nineteen," Joseph says. "And the client takes one look at Willie and says, 'Bring me your father.' We talk private and the guy says, 'Look, he's a great kid and all, I like him a lot, but you're going to be there ... aren't you?"' One of Joseph's clients refused point-blank to sign a contract with Billy. "So I signed the contract, gave it back to Willie, and he did the job," says Joseph.
    Billy began to bring in new construction jobs--$13 million worth the first year. "Willie would bring in the jobs and I would try to knock them down," Joseph says. "He hasn't brought in a loser yet."
    "I was making $400,000 my first year out of school," Billy says. "But I wasn't doing what I wanted to do. I wasn't what I wanted to be."
    Finally, Billy was introduced to Morsemere Federal Savings in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey. "Before I went to Morsemere, I went to church and prayed," Billy says. "I told God I'd cut him in if I got the money."
    Mike Scaduto, Morsemere's president, says, "I'd never dealt with someone this young as a principal in construction before. But Billy seemed to know what he was talking about."
    In two weeks, Morsemere decided to do the White Beach deal. "We had never financed major construction in the Bronx before," Scaduto says. "And at the time, this was a large deal for us. Billy would say that luxury condominiums there could sell at Fort Lee prices. I just didn't believe that was going to happen."
    "I didn't believe it, either," says Billy. "It was my job to convince him."
    Morsemere lent Billy $5.5 million, conditional on Billy's raising another $800,000. A builder from Pakistan answered an ad Billy took out and decided he liked the sound of the deal. "The guy invested $400,000 in me," Billy says, "but on one condition--that my father have no involvement in the project. Now, my father didn't have anything to do with it. This was my deal. But that really buried him--to hear someone say that. I was still just a kid in his eyes."
    The other $400,000 was finally raised, and at 21, Billy broke ground for his first project.

FAMILY TIES: Billy's development company shares offices with his father's construction firm. "My father will stop a meeting after we've had a fight and say, 'Come here, kiss me,' says Billy.

SOON AFTERWARD, BILLY AND Mario formed Procida Development. Mario was just finishing UCLA's graduate school of architecture, and the time seemed right to make a distinction between the construction and development parts of the family business. "I had to get away from my father," Billy says. "I didn't want to really leave. I just wanted things a little separate ... but not too separate. My father and I are like a husband and wife who love each other but don't get along too good."
    Billy got his wish: Procida Construction and Procida Development are in the same cramped, windowless offices on East 173rd Street, a dubious section of the South Bronx. "I see my parents in the office, I kiss them every day," Billy says. "My father will stop in the middle of a meeting after we've had a fight and say, 'Come here, kiss me."'
    Procida Development is the real-estate equivalent of Menudo: The ages of the principals go from 19 (Joey) to 28 (Mario). Billy finds the deals, Mario is the architect and engineer, and Chrissie (when on vacation from the University of Hartford, where she's a senior) prepares contracts and keeps things from falling apart. Joey just finished working as an estimator on a nightclub job before heading back for his second year at Franklin and Marshall.
    "Joey is training this summer. This was his first real job," Billy says paternally.
    Have Billy's siblings ever found his success just a little hard to take? Billy is appalled by such a suggestion: "I do good, we all do good. Whatever I make, whatever anyone makes, we split. Five ways-my parents, my brother, myself, my sister, my brother."
    The family ties make for a good deal of coziness at the office, though it's sometimes hard to understand how anything gets done when two or more Procidas are gathered in a room. A week before he is set to leave on his first trip to Italy ("I hear it's a historical place," he says), Billy is sitting with his feet up on his desk, going over the bills. "Lorraine," he says to his assistant, "I'd like to pay my mother-$25,000 I owe her. And Chrissie, hey, where the hell is she?"
    Chrissie, a petite girl with long brown hair held back with a headband, marches in the room. She looks perhaps fifteen (she's actually twenty), and her high, sweet voice sounds out of place as she reviews a presentation they are making that Friday to HPD.
    "You wear your suit Friday," Billy says to his sister. "Gotta look professional--the financials are riding on you."
    The phone rings and Billy shouts into the speaker box: "You say I owe you 50 [thousand dollars]. I say you owe me 25 [thousand]. I think we have what you might call a discrepancy here."
    Mario wanders in, sporting longish hair and an undone bow tie. Mario is the doubting Thomas of the siblings. Though he enjoys what he does, he questions the child-labor concept. "None of us ever thought of doing anything different than coming into the business. It was expected," Mario says. "And Billy keeps pushing Chrissie and Joey even more, telling them to get construction experience, to hurry things up. I'm telling them, 'Slow down, have a good time."'
    "I don't understand Mario," says Billy, getting off the phone. "I want them to be learning. Period. It's costing us $15,000 a year, I don't want them screwing off." He shakes his head in bewilderment. "Isn't this the time when your mind's the most ready to learn? Isn't this when you should be tearing up the town?"
    Joey sticks his head in the door. "I'm done for the day, Billy," he says. Joey is taller than the others and built like a linebacker. While the rest of the family loves to work, Joey loves to work out. "Joey's lackadaisical," Billy says.
    "Billy's always been jealous of my size," Joey drawls.
    The phone rings again and Billy answers it. "Don't tell me nothing bad, Freddy," he says to an associate. The news is bad. A potential client is having problems with financing. "Tell him his accountant sucks!" Billy yells and then shifts gears, smiling into the speaker box. "So how are you, Fred?" he asks in mild tones. The two discuss their options, and the interoffice buzzer goes off. "Billy, I want to see you." It's his mother.
    "What is it, Ma? I got problems, I can't see you." Thirty seconds later, Dorothy is in his office, listening to the deal fall apart.
    "You'll sue him," she says quietly. "That's what you'll do, you'll sue him."
    "You gotta do me a personal favor," Billy shouts into the box. "I gotta get him a mortgage."
    "No one's gonna give him a mortgage," says his mother to the walls.
    "Hey, Ma, will you please stop?"
    "I want to talk to you in private, Billy--before I break your head."
    Billy gets off the phone. "What is it, Ma?"
    "Apologize."
    "What for?"
    "You cursed. Apologize. I heard you curse through the door."
    Billy grins and puts his arm around his mother. "Ma, I love you, but enough."
   'MY MOTHER BELIEVES IN teaching by guilt," Billy says at a Sunday family meeting at his parents' New Jersey home. "The other day I was yelling at my lawyer. I come out of my office and say, 'Where's my mother?’ And I get this note: 'Your mother left because you were yelling on the phone.' "
    Joseph smiles indulgently at his son. "This is a violent business," he says gently, and stretches out on his rose plush sofa, sipping champagne from a silver flute. "You can't always be so dignified and articulate. You got someone not living up to their agreement, you get exasperated, you have to vent your emotions. You have to scream, you have to yell. And occasionally, you have to throw an ashtray."
    "Bunch of lunatics," Dorothy mutters, and the others laugh.
    Being part of a family business isn't the easiest thing in the world, and the Procidas have qualified praise for their situation. Billy and his father seem to thrive on it the most.
    "Who but your own children has your own interest in mind?" Joseph asks expansively, with an affectionate glance at his family gathered around him. "We live to work. If I have to choose between going to the theater and doing a deal, I'll do a deal."
    "There are other things," Dorothy says quietly.
    "Like what, Ma?" Billy asks with a grin.
    "Like Marie Antoinette. Yesterday Billy didn't know who said, 'Let them eat cake,"' Dorothy says. "I don't like my children to all be in the business. I'd like to hear something besides construction and deals once in a while. And I wish Billy had gone to college."
    "Sure," says Joseph. "It's a great place. To do nothing for four years."
    "I wish Billy had gone to college," Dorothy persists. "To learn music, to learn Shakespeare, to learn who said, 'Let them eat cake."'
    "I learned that yesterday, Ma."
    "Everyone else has known it for hundreds of years and you learn it yesterday."
    "You can't ask him anything about Shakespeare, but ask him anything about a mortgage," Joseph says. "He's a hustler, a natural salesman."
    A YEAR AGO, JULIE SANDORF, project director of Mid-Bronx Desperados, the community-development group that sponsored the ranch homes built on Charlotte Street, was shopping for a developer. She needed an experienced developer with imagination, one who was willing to deal with all the headaches of city bureaucracy-and take the risk of not making much of a profit. Sandorf finally wrote to Billy Procida: Would he be interested in building the next stage of the Charlotte Street project?
    "You ever catch someone at the right time, place, mood?" Billy asks. 'That's what Julie did. She gave me a new goal. Any idiot can build a pleasure palace in Manhattan and make a fortune. But who's gonna build decent, affordable housing for the policeman and the nurse?"
    Salters Square, as the next phase of Charlotte Street is called, will be a series of townhouses for middle-income families. The houses will cost approximately $75,000 each; the government subsidizes $4 million of the $14-million total cost. Billy will be allowed to make a $1-million profit, but as he points out, it is not unusual to be 20 percent over budget, which would eliminate his profit altogether.
    "My father's aggravated with me," Billy says. "He thinks the problems of society are for the president."
    "I'm not as civic-minded as Willie," says Joseph. "I think if you take a risk, you should get paid for it."
    The plans do not look much like those for a typical subsidized housing project. The buildings are almost New Wave. Windows are placed asymmetrically, and there are a number of decorative elements-a fluted-steel column and a steel bar that bisects the master-bedroom window. "Most builders don't think about how these people live. I think they should," Billy says. "Just 'cause someone's a garbageman doesn't mean he shouldn't have a funky place to live."
    Billy is most excited about the bathroom he's designed for Salters Square. It consists of three sections, each with its own sliding door.
    "It's to, whaddaya call it, maximize usage," says Billy. "In the first part, I got one daughter taking a shower in the tub while the other one's doing her makeup over the sink. Next part, my wife's taking a shower in the stall, and in here, I can hit the head in privacy. And when the kids and I leave for the day, my wife can close the doors and she's got a palatious bathroom like you got in a half-a-million-dollar house. This woman deserves to luxuriate in her bathroom."
    And what does the family architect think of the bathroom plan? Mario thinks for a moment: "Yeah, I guess I looked at that. Seemed okay by me." He adds with a slow smile, "That's one of the advantages of working with-your brother. You don't have to listen to all the bull."
    For Billy, it's all part of his larger vision of the Bronx: "Rebuild the whole friggin' Bronx. That's what I've got ringing through my head these days."
    "We're excited that we'll be dealing with a principal who's based in the Bronx, has worked in the Bronx, and who lives in the Bronx," Julie Sandorf says. ''That, to us, indicates a real commitment to the area."
    BILLY DOES INDEED LIVE IN the Bronx-at White Beach. As he is fond of saying in his salesman's voice, "I liked my development so much, I live there." His two-bedroom apartment serves as a sales office for the 2 remaining unsold units (there are 52 in all). He claims to have chosen all the furniture himself, but the apartment, which has lovely views of the East River ("Long Island Sound," Billy insists), seems to be made-to-order Young Bachelor. Vertical Levolor blinds screen the windows, the furniture is black lacquer and white rattan, and the only wall decorations are blown-up plans, renditions, and ads for White Beach. There is not a book or magazine or newspaper in the entire apartment.
    Billy thinks that living in his own development is the only way to understand what it's like to be a citizen of the Bronx particularly of the White Beach area, a established middle-income Italian neighborhood, known locally as Throgs Neck. To further the learning process, he does volunteer work for the YW-YMCA and helped get the area a day-care center. He donated money to pay for local graffit removal and Christmas lights along the shopping avenue. And he has befriended a good number of his buyers. One couple, Ed and Randy Schlang, became so enamored of Billy and his project that they agreed to pose for an ad he did for White Beach.
    (Advertising was one of the keys to selling White Beach. "We never called it the Bronx," Billy says. "And we never advertised in the Bronx. We'd advertise in the Westchester section of the Times and call it the alternative to Westchester. We'd do the same with Long Island and Queens. And we always called it Throgs Neck--never the Bronx.")
    Billy has been particularly involved with Tony Alessandro, the window manufacturer who bought two condominiums. Since November, Billy has persuaded Alessandro to open a plant in the Bronx. "It'll provide 250 jobs for the area," Billy says with glee.
    ONE SUMMER AFTERNOON Billy comes to admire Alessandro's condominium alterations--the imported black marble that edges every window and door, the 120 high-hat and eyeball lights the 22-karat-gold-plated bathroom fixtures, and the curved recess at the top of the stairs, where Alessandro plans to put his statue of Diana. "Tony, it's terrific," says Billy.
    Billy then struts outside, past the white stucco buildings and onto the dock, where he surveys the East River. "People swim here all the time," he says, watching a lump of sludge float by. Oddly enough, though, the water does look fairly clean. He is upset that he can't show off his newly acquired 26-foot boat. The reason: He sank it last weekend.
    "I've just decided I'm not mature enough to have a boat," he announces. "That was a great boat, though. You couldn't not party on that boat. I love to party." He leans forward and confides softly, " 'Cause if you don't party, what's it all for?"
    Billy Procida likes to do things in a big way. The combined net worth of Mario and Billy is a surprisingly low $1 million-almost all profits are put back into the business-but Billy manages to lead an extremely comfortable life. "I'm typical nouveau riche," he says cheerfully when his gold Mercedes and Baume & Mercier watch are admired.
    Last Christmas Eve, Billy got engaged to Bobbie Ruscick, his longtime girlfriend. Typically, he didn't content himself with a ring and a candlelight dinner. First, a limousine was sent to Bobbie's New Jersey home to bring her to Manhattan. "The next thing I knew, I was at Elizabeth Arden's," Bobbie says. "And they told me Billy had arranged for me to have everything done-my hair, hands, feet, and face. I felt like a queen for a day." A large box was later delivered there for Bobbie: "Billy had bought me the most beautiful red taffeta dress you ever saw."
    The limousine, this time with Billy and a bottle of champagne in it, was waiting for Bobbie when she emerged. "Billy told the driver to go through Central Park, which sounded so romantic. Only it was the driver's first day on the job, and he didn't know where the park was. We finally got there and just as Billy was about to propose, we came out onto Central Park West. Billy made the driver turn right around there and go back into the park. He said it wasn't part of his plan to propose on the West Side."
    I Billy also has very definite plans for his marriage: Once the honeymoon is over, he is determined that Bobbie will not continue her job as a nurse for long. "I am very old world about this," he says. "I don't want Bobbie working. I want her at home doing wife stuff."
    He isn't quite sure what "wife stuff" involves, but is confident that it exists and will make his future bride more than happy.
    Does Bobbie want to quit her job? Billy looks startled. "I never asked her."
    "I love nursing," Bobbie says fervently. "Billy doesn't believe in wives working, but I do. I'm sure we can work that out. I just wish he didn't want to have kids right away." She groans with good humor. "He wants a dozen, you know. I think he wants kids so he'll have someone to play Monopoly with. It's his favorite game."
    Billy's family takes great pleasure discussing whether he is ready for marriage. In his presence. Everyone has an opinion, but Chrissie has the final word: "Billy needs to get married."
    His sister may be right. Billy's plans for the future are not those of a full-fledged adult just yet. When asked where he'd like to be when he's 40, Billy promptly replies, "I'd like to be a rock star."
    But doesn't he like what he does?
    "Am you kidding?" Billy asks. "I love my work. But you can't do this forever. Not when you're 40." He looks troubled for a microsecond. "Man, I don't want to get old. This last birthday was the worst. I wish I could turn back time. You know what I really want to be when I'm 40? I want to be a kid again."