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82 T he Hotel Granduca terrace is bustling during this weekday lunch hour. There's a wedding party at one table, swans at another, and unobtrusively occupying a corner perch is Granduca owner Giorgio Borlenghi, Houston real estate's very elegant visionary. Joining the debonair 65-year-old is his son, Alex, who at 26 is poised to take the reins of the development firm that has made luxury the hallmark of its varied portfolio. Today's lunch opens a window to the relationship the two enjoy as they begin to share duties at the helm of The Interfin Companies. It's a playful, respectful, and thoughtful give-and-take between the two, who consider themselves best friends. "It's been phenomenal for me," Giorgio says of working with his only son. "It's been rewarding, and it's been a lot of fun." Alex had planned to pursue a career in finance, but he was persuaded by his father to join the family firm. "The first year, I shadowed Giorgio everywhere so that I could see all sides of the business. It allowed me to think like he thinks." Alex's matriculation continues a long family tradition: For more than 60 years, the Borlenghi clan has been in real estate development in Europe, South America, California, and Texas. Expansion to Houston began in 1978 when Giorgio and his wife, Cathy, arrived from their native Italy, introducing the oil-crazed city to a level of development sophistication honed through several generations of the Milan-based Borlenghi family. The partnership includes lunching together two or three times a week, often at what might loosely be called the family cafeterias: the Granduca's fashionable Ristorante Cavour or, DEVELOPER GIORGIO BORLENGHI AND HIS SON, ALEX, TALK STARCHITECTS, THE TERM 'DAD," AND THE GRADUAL CHANGING OF THE GUARD. SHELBY HODGE LISTENS IN. PORTRAIT MAX BURKHALTER. GIORGIO AND ALEX BORLENGHI as on this day, Il Giardino. The duo, of course, knows the menu well, ordering fried calamari, prosciutto with burrata, beet salad, bresola with goat cheese, and more. As the Italian courses arrive, Alex says that he had dreams of becoming a rocker in New York (he plays both piano and guitar). That didn't pan out, so the University of Texas grad opted for finance before joining Interfin. That early dream was not unlike his father's. Giorgio had wanted to become a professional musician, perhaps an orchestra conductor. "There was only one problem," he says. "In music, there are no bricks. In my family, you could do anything you wanted to do in your life, as long as bricks were involved." Thus, he earned a master's degree in structural engineering at the University of Milan and went to work with the family. In a departure from Borlenghi family tradition, Alex addresses his father by his first name. "We've been in so many meetings with other father/son duos. 'Dad does this. Dad does that,'" Alex says. "It just seems a bit off to me. It doesn't sound professional, and it brings up the blatant nepotism that some people detest." In the boardroom or on the golf course, it's Giorgio and Alex. Today, Interfin's portfolio is packed with luxury high-rise dwellings and office towers, hotels, and two high-profile retail developments, Uptown Park (1999) and Vintage Park (2010). But perhaps the most well known buildings are the first two projects Giorgio built, with architect Cesar Pelli: the sleek Four Leaf Towers residential high-rises (1982) and the Four Oaks Place Office Towers (1983). Houston had never seen the like, when this dashing developer and his starchitect unveiled the double Towers with pyramidal roofs and mosaic glass skins of cream, LUNCH WITH Giorgio Borlenghi on the cover of Southwest Airlines magazine, 1983 Cathy & Giorgio Borlenghi, Nellie Connally & Governor John Connally, Lorenzo Borlenghi at the opening of Four Leaf Towers, June 18, 1982