Andreas Apostolopoulos a Greek-Canadian Who went from labourer to billionaire
On a winter walk through Elgin Mills Cemetery in Richmond Hill, Ontario, I stopped at the unique grave of Andreas Apostolopoulos, widely regarded as Canada’s wealthiest Greek-Canadian.
Apostolopoulos was born in Kalamata, Greece, and arrived in Canada in 1969 at the age of 17. Like many Greek families in the 1950s and 1960s, his family looked abroad in search of better opportunities. With little money and limited English—but plenty of determination—Andreas began his career doing manual labour jobs and janitorial work.
While working as a janitor, he spotted a business opportunity and started his own office-cleaning company. Through this work he realized that plastic garbage bags were a major expense for the buildings he serviced. The young entrepreneur had a simple idea: Why not manufacture them himself?
He began producing plastic garbage and packaging bags for his own clients, allowing the company to grow rapidly.
Running the plastic bag business taught him valuable lessons that later helped him build a real-estate empire—managing production facilities, purchasing machinery, supervising a workforce, and reinvesting profits. Over time, he began putting those profits into property.
Eventually, Apostolopoulos moved fully into real estate and founded the Triple Group of Companies.
One of his most famous investments came in 2009 when he purchased the abandoned Pontiac Silverdome near Detroit. The 126-acre complex had once been home to the Detroit Lions and had opened in 1975 at a cost of a whopping $55 million dollars. By the 2000s, however, the stadium was largely unused and extremely expensive to maintain, prompting the city to auction it off.
At the auction, Apostolopoulos raised his paddle and purchased the entire complex for the astonishing price of US$583,000 dollars ($4626 an acre) or as much as a modest downtown condo in Toronto today.
Years later, after demolishing the deteriorating stadium, the property was redeveloped and ultimately sold for about $250 million. Today, the site is home to a massive distribution facility operated by Amazon.
Finally, the billionaire who built his fortune primarily in the Greater Toronto Area by buying undervalued warehouses and commercial properties followed three simple rules: buy when others are afraid, focus on land value (look at the land it’s on, not the building), and hold for the long term. His formula and the tremendous success that followed will be remembered as one of the great Canadian business stories.
Andreas Apostolopoulos died in Toronto on February 15, 2021. He was 69
1952-2021
