PHOTO: ANDY FARQUHAR
By Libertina Brandt | Wall Street Journal
The late Frank Mineo was a “flashy guy” who parlayed a basement fish-breeding operation into chains of pet stores, according to his son, Frank Mineo Jr., who said his father’s colorful personality is evident throughout his mountaintop compound in Phoenix.
“He liked to spend his money,” Mr. Mineo said of his father, who sold six fish and pet-supply stores to Petco in the 1990s.
The elder Mr. Mineo died last year at the age of 76, and the roughly 3.5-acre property is on the market for $6.5 million with Rosie Derryberry of Realty Executives.
The home, located on Camelback Mountain with views of Phoenix and Scottsdale, was among his father’s prized possessions, Mr. Mineo said: He purchased it in 1992 for about $1.2 million, and believed it was one of the first homes in the area to sell for over $1 million.
The elder Mr. Mineo began his career in the pet industry in Buffalo, N.Y., where he was born and raised. “He always wanted to have his own business,” and stumbled on tropical fish while searching for a noncompetitive industry to get into, his son said. In the 1960s, he began breeding them in his basement while working full time at a steel plant. The fish business grew, and he was eventually able to quit his job and open a fish store in south Buffalo.
Following a blizzard in the late 1970s, the family moved to Phoenix to escape Buffalo’s snowy weather. There, Mr. Mineo said his father opened several chains that sold a variety of pets and pet supplies. One of those, “Payless Aquarium and Pet Supply,” was purchased by Petco in the mid-1990s.
