Company brings new technology to old problem in Collier County


Company brings new technology to old problem in Collier County


After reading newspaper articles on the subjects a few years back, Chuck Ardezzone saw the potential for tiny homes and shipping container homes to address the affordable housing crunch in Collier County.

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It didn’t pan out.

Tiny homes face hurdles to meet county building codes and shipping container home aren’t the answer either. Once you start cutting holes in them for doors and windows, they lose some of their structural integrity, and reinforcing them raises the cost.

But his research led him to Paul Inglese, a builder who was working with composite materials, and together they’ve formed Galexa, a company using cutting-edge materials to bring something new to the housing market.

In a space on Mercantile Avenue, the company is producing shells that can be taken to a home site and erected.

The key difference between a Galexa home and a traditional prefabricated home is the material. Over 16 years Inglese developed a composite building material consisting of polymers, resins and high-stiffness glass fiber reinforcement.

Beams made of the material look like the steel I-beams you’d see in a skyscraper’s skeleton but weigh only a fraction as much.

Wall panels just a quarter-inch thick can withstand a 9mm gunshot, evidenced by a dented demonstration panel next to a bullet-riddled car door at the company’s warehouse.



a man standing in front of a box: Paul Inglese looks over a panel of composite material shot, but not penetrated, by a 9mm handgun at the Galexa plant on Mercantile Avenue.


© Brent Batten
Paul Inglese looks over a panel of composite material shot, but not penetrated, by a 9mm handgun at the Galexa plant on Mercantile Avenue.

Together, the beams and panels can withstand 250 mph winds. The system was approved under the Florida building code in April.

While they have a few homes under contract around Collier County, the company’s first big test is shaping up to be in Immokalee.

There they’re working with the Immokalee Fair Housing Alliance on plans to build a 128-unit apartment complex for farmworker families.

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Arol Buntzman, chairman of the nonprofit group, sees potential in the Galexa building system.

“Low maintenance costs. It’s cheaper to build. I was impressed with what they were presenting. It’s definitely a modernization of the old tilt-up construction,” Buntzman said.

The project, to be built on Lake Trafford Road near the Winn-Dixie plaza, was to go before the Collier County Planning Commission in April but that meeting was canceled because of the COVID-19 pandemic. It is now scheduled for July at the CCPC with county commission consideration coming in September. So far, no one has raised any objections to the project, Buntzman said.

Construction of the $18 million complex could begin next spring.

In the meantime, Ardezzone and Inglese are busy marketing their system and training workers, hoping for a surge in business once the pandemic eases.

From their Mercantile Avenue site, they can produce enough frames to build 100 houses a month.

While the frames are basically rectangles, they can be configured any number of ways to build houses that don’t look like modular homes.

“People ask, ‘What’s it going to look like?’ It can look like anything,” Ardezzone said.

He and Inglese like to call their company the Tesla of their field. “We’re disrupting the building industry,” Ardezzone said.

The comparison to Tesla may be a stretch.

But, says Buntzman of the technology, “It’s pretty cool.”

(Connect with Brent Batten at [email protected])



a man standing next to a building: Paul Inglese, left, and Chuck Ardezzone, lift a lightweight I-beam made of a composite material being used by Galexa home builders.


© Brent Batten
Paul Inglese, left, and Chuck Ardezzone, lift a lightweight I-beam made of a composite material being used by Galexa home builders.

This article originally appeared on Naples Daily News: Brent Batten: Company brings new technology to old problem in Collier County