Rocky Papale

A valued Sales Associate, Rocky Papale uses his native knowledge as an advantage for his clients.His sincerity, tenacity, and determination make him a valued partner in residential sales.As a Trustee Sales Consultant for 20 years, Rocky participated in the sale of hundreds of retail and wholesale businesses throughout the Bay Area.The lessons learned in the trustee business in a city as diverse as San Francisco serve him well in real estate: patience, compromise, diligence, and more patience.Through a family partnership, Rocky has managed and developed several multi-unit apartment buildings and investment properties.Rocky also enjoys the renovation of Victorian homes, and sees renovation of homes not only as an investment, but as a way of taking pride in our community.

Rocky spent his youth in a wonderful Edwardian home on the corner of Washington and Walnut in San Francisco's Presidio Heights area with his three older brothers and younger sister.While his parents discouraged it, Rocky and his buddies loved to play "hop the fence" throughout the neighborhood, providing him with an "over the top" view of the neighborhood's home's and gardens.With Julius Kahn playground as a back yard, Rocky spent many a San Francisco afternoon playing baseball or exploring the vast wilderness then known as The Presidio.

Rocky attended St. Luke's Pre-School, where his 5 year old boy, Nicky, has just recently graduated.Rocky then went on to Madison School, now Claire Lilienthal School.He attended St. Brigid's School and is a graduate of St. Ignatius College Prep, and is honored to have served as Student Body President.Rocky went on to Berkeley, where he joined the Zeta Psi Fraternity, and majored in History.He studied Renaissance history in Florence, Italy and also traveled throughout Europe.As a young man, Rocky had always appreciated San Francisco's diverse and storied architectural styles, from Maybeck to Julia Morgan, from Victorian to Beaux Arts.

"If they knock down the Coronet Theater," thunders Rocky Papale, who lives on Almaden, "the city of San Francisco should take our neighborhood character and have it cremated and interred in the Columbarium."

Broadly, the Francisco Heights neighborhood runs south from Geary to Balboa and east from Arguello Boulevard up to USF and Lone Mountain.
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"I've never left San Francisco, but I never knew Almaden Court was here," says Papale, who would have kept on not knowing if his brother, David, were not a real estate agent.There are two dozen houses on Almaden, most built in the 1930s in the Rousseau style of small Tudor and Spanish revival.The Papale house has a balcony over the garage and any day now, he will throw open the French doors, step out and break into oration.Papale, 47, hasn't been political since he was student body president of St. Ignatius College Prep in 1975-76, but this issue has him worked up.
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They just haven't been saying anything," says Papale, who has only to stand outside for a few minutes and a neighbor will come running up to discuss strategy.
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"The result for us would be the cold aesthetics of a stone wall," Papale says.

Rocky Papale '76, former student body president at SI, works to save Coronet Theatre.