CEO Paul Ognibene Looks at the History of Urban Spaces
Paul Ognibene has proudly served as the CEO of Urban Spaces for nearly 15 years. It all started when Ognibene was searching for a place to live after graduating from college and couldn’t find a reasonably-priced apartment that he actually wanted to live in. Instead, Ognibene and a college roommate decided that they would stop their search and buy a piece of land and build their own apartment building.
That first project sparked Ognibene’s interest in real estate development and ultimately led to the formation of Urban Spaces. Fifteen years later, Urban Spaces has expanded into an award-winning development company based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The growth of Urban Spaces continues to be driven by Paul Ognibene and his passion for ideas and creative problem solving.
Ognibene didn’t always call Massachusetts home. He grew up outside of Chicago and his entrepreneurial spirit took shape in high school when he started the Fenwick Friar Shoppe, a college-style gear shop which provides Fenwick logoed merchandise to students and alumni across the country, with the profits going to fund student tuitions.
After high school, Ognibene went on to Boston College, where he earned a BA in Economics, and expanded his business to sell logoed gear at BC and other college campuses around the country. After college, Ognibene returned to Chicago to work for the Northern Trust Company, a Fortune 500 company and one of the 20 largest investment managers in the world. After working at Northern, Ognibene went back to Boston to attend Harvard Business School, earning his MBA and then Urban Spaces was born.
To read more about Urban Spaces and where the company is headed as it nears its 15th anniversary, please visit UrbanSpacesLLC.com.