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SOoo INTERESTING! Learn the backstory and history of Houston's neighborhoods. Vincent Kickerillo, pioneering homebuilder of west Houston communities, dies at 97. “Vincent Kickerillo’s impact on the homebuilding industry and community development in our region cannot be overstated,” Aimee Bertrand, executive director and CEO of the Greater Houston Home Builders Association. “Generations of Houston builders and developers owe their careers and countless opportunities to Mr. Kickerillo.”..Across his nearly 70-year career, his company developed more than 22,000 lots and built 16,500 homes. He transformed forested land into suburban-style homes along Memorial Drive, and established master-planned communities such as Keilliwood and Nottingham Country in Katy as well as Lakes of Parkway near the Energy Corridor. He was known for large, traditional brick houses with cedar-shingle roofs, fireplaces and open floor plans, many of which still stand today. .The son of an Italian immigrant and sharecropper, Kickerillo was the youngest of 14 children in a low-income family in Bryan. He moved to Houston without his parents at 13, worked for Hughes Tool Co. and joined the Merchant Marines at 16, an experience his daughter said taught him the discipline he carried throughout his life. .After at least 12 years as a merchant mariner, Kickerillo used earnings he won playing poker to start building houses. When he was unhappy with a builder’s work on his own Memorial Drive home, he took over construction himself. He liked the process so much he started his own company in 1957.

Within a few years, Kickerillo’s real estate business was booming, and he moved into the land development and banking side of construction, too. But his lending to friends in real estate and to newly established banks came back to haunt him during the 1980s oil bust, when property values plummeted and several banks began failing. By April 1987, Kickerillo’s UnitedBank-Houston was declared insolvent, then the largest bank failure in the city’s history. The failure cost him personally about $50 million, according to newspaper archives.

He described it as “the scariest time of his life”, according to a 2011 interview in the Houston Business Journal.

In 2017, Hurricane Harvey flooded his longtime Memorial home, destroying decades of possessions and memories. Stan Creech, a longtime friend who worked on several land deals with him, said he thought he would be devastated. “I said, ‘Mr. K, I am so sorry,’ and he said, ‘Tomorrow is another day,’” Creech recalled.

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Pioneering homebuilder of west Houston communities dies at 97 Kickerillo built thousands of homes, survived a devastating banking collapse and developed communities that still define much of west Houston and Katy today.