Anthony Rinaldi

Rinaldi was born in Elizabeth, New Jersey, and he is the only child and son of the late Anthony T. Rinaldi, II, a highly decorated and hall of fame police captain and 30-year veteran of the Hoboken Police Department, Hoboken, New Jersey and Mary Rinaldi, nee Visaggio, an amateur bowling champion who competed throughout Hudson County, New Jersey, and who is also a hall of fame amateur bowler who’s stature has been immortalized in the National Bowling Museum & Hall of Fame, located in St. Louis, Missouri. Rinaldi’s father was a World War II veteran and Seabee, a member of the United States Navy Construction Battalion with the word “Seabee” coming from the initials “CB”. He was a significant figure in Rinaldi’s life and bloodline of construction, although he died when Rinaldi was only 19 and a freshman in college.

Rinaldi attended Secaucus High School in Secaucus, New Jersey and was a K-12 graduate of the Secaucus Public School System, where he excelled both academically as well as athletically. Having graduated with honors and a 3.4 out of 4.0 GPA (A-) and named to the Star Ledger’s 1st-Team All-State Honors in 1983, he was named twice to Who’s Who Among American High School Students both in 1981-82 and in 1982-83. Rinaldi received numerous athletic scholarships to play college baseball and was considered one of the top professional catching prospects in the nation, landing tryouts with the then California Angels, the Los Angeles Dodgers and the Cleveland Indians. Given the strict upbringing and influence of his father, Rinaldi chose the path of college and an engineering degree first, over a professional career in baseball, an opportunity that would not come again with the passing of his father and his having to work to support both himself and his mother.

In 1983 Rinaldi accepted a scholarship1 to play Division I baseball at Lehigh University, Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, where he majored in Mechanical Engineering and he received his Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering in 1988, having taken time away from college when his father passed of colon cancer in 1984, just after Rinaldi and Lehigh came off of one of the university’s most successful baseball seasons in the school’s history, winning the ECC (East Coast Conference) division and just missing a trip to Omaha, Nebraska to compete in the College World Series. In his sophomore year following his passing, Rinaldi dedicated the season to his father and was, thereafter, always found wearing a long, black wrist-band midway up the length of his left-forearm. He proceeded to be one of the nation’s leading hitters that year, finishing #5 in the ECC with a .393 batting average, just under the elusive .400 mark. In his following two (2) seasons, Rinaldi was named team captain and finished .375 and .354, in his junior and senior seasons, respectively, and was named the team’s Most Valuable Player as a senior in 1987. Years later, Rinaldi would be honored with the distinction of being named to the Secaucus High School Athletic Hall of Fame in March 2002.

Although Rinaldi had a rather illustrious baseball career at Lehigh, his focus and interest had always been engineering and construction and following his father’s death in 1984, he lost the luxury to pursue a professional career in baseball and remained ever so focused on his professional career as an engineer and builder. In 1988, Rinaldi turned down offers with Consolidated Rail Corporation2, Hess Corporation3 and First Brands Corporation4 to join HRH Construction, then one of New York City’s and the nation’s largest commercial builders and the construction division of Starrett Corporation, the entity that built the Empire State Building in 1929. There, he was involved in building several high-profile projects, among them the historical Audubon Ballroom, a venue best known for the assassination site of Malcolm X back on February 21, 1965.

Professional and business career
Rinaldi began his high-rise residential career while at HRH, building structures like the 179-Unit, 43-Story Le Grand Palais at 250 E. 54th Street, designed by Fox & Fowle Architects, the 521-Unit, 31-Story Monterey at 175 E. 96th Street for The Related Companies as designed by Costas Kondylis & Associates and the 207-Unit, 20-Story Fordham University Dormitory, Lincoln Center Campus at 113 W. 60th Street designed by SLCE Architects. Prior to leaving HRH, Rinaldi worked on the $140 million modernization and renovation project at Elmhurst Hospital Center in Queens, New York, although he changed gears between 1994 and 1996, accepting an offer from DeFillips Construction Corporation, a federal and public works construction management firm then owned by two graduates of Lafayette College, which together with Lehigh University forms the nation’s longest standing college rivalry. It was through that college rivalry or later camaraderie that Rinaldi built his first public school P.S.#22 in Brooklyn, New York, which in part, acted