By Aram Arkun
Mirror-Spectator Staff
WATERTOWN – Peter Palandjian, the chief executive officer of Intercontinental Real Estate Corporation, spoke about his work and real estate at the November 2 St. James Armenian Church Men’s Club dinner meeting.
Prior to Palandjian’s talk, Men’s Club chairman Dick Janjigian introduced Hayk Demoyan, director of the Armenian Genocide Museum-Institute in Yerevan, who said a few words about his lecture the following day at the Armenian Cultural Foundation on Armenian sports and physical education in the Ottoman Empire.
Palandjian first acknowledged his mother and other family members in the audience, and then thanked Ira Stepanian, the retired chairman and CEO of the Bank of Boston, for “being like an uncle or a second father to me,” and mentoring him in his business for many years. Palandjian spent the first part of his lecture sketching out what he does in his company, then made some observations about the greater Boston real estate market, and ended with a market forecast.
Palandjian related that his father Petros came as an immigrant to Boston from Iran, and after graduating from Northeastern University, founded a construction company, called Cosmpolitan Construction in Boston and Yekan Construction in Iran and Lebanon. From 1959 to 1972 the family were builders in the US, and overseas served as the outsource contractor for A. J. Jones, a worldwide construction company. Petros built the Hilton in Tehran and the famous wall around the US embassy in Iran. In the 1970s he began developing — in addition to building, he put his own money and money from friends into projects.
