“I am rital. I claim this often pejorative term, which originally designated Italian refugees, at the heart of the 20th century. “I was born in Liège, Belgium, in 1949, to parents from Friuli, north of Venice. Driven by hunger, they went to work in the mines,” says André Tesan, in his slightly veiled voice. “Immediately after my birth, they moved to Charleville-Mézières, in the Ardennes. My father couldn’t stand the face. So he worked as a mason. My parents never had a car, so when I got my first, a beige 4L, I was proud! »
“A woman made me stray from my path”
Law school in Reims in 1969, civil servant at the Ministry of Finance in Paris in 1975 then in Rennes, four years later, before an opportunity in a regional bank, in 1990, in Quimper: André’s arrival at the tip of Brittany was done in stages. “I had toured the civil service but I was proud to have done it, I who had the diplomas to become a lawyer and had been eligible for the entrance examination of the ENA (national school of administration) . “She’s a woman who turned me off my path, and I’m glad she did.”
Now a widower, André Tesan met Françoise Kerlidou in the city of Ponant in 1991. They had twins. “She was one of the biggest promoters in the city. She made me want to set up, in 1996, as a real estate agent but in the professional sector: to each their own”. He brought the Arthur Loyd brand to Brest before creating ATI (André Tesan Immobilier, an employee in addition to the boss) in 2001, reselling his first business in 2007. “I don’t want to produce for the sake of producing, I’m doing an operation to at once, to do it well. I’m kind of a real estate artisan. I don’t have the pressure of supporting 50 employees. I create jobs but indirectly.”
At the origin of emblematic buildings
His origins led him to call “Le Venise”, a building with a bank and design offices, which he grew with a subdivision, in Guipavas (29), opposite two emblematic buildings in the east of the Brest metropolis: Eau du Ponant and Naval Group. Also by his own doing. “I named it that with the agreement of my partner on several cases, Stéphane Biannic,” he laughs.
“20,000m2 in this neighborhood, I’m quite happy! », smiles André Tesan again, with a hint of modesty this time. “It’s twenty years of work. The first contacts took place in 2004 with the owners of the fields. The sale of the last lot in front of the restaurant was in 2024.” But times are changing and this elegant, slender septuagenarian, sensitive to the environment, today prefers to “retrain in urban rehabilitation rather than expanding to the outskirts. “The question hardly arose twenty years ago.”
It was the Republic school that made me. I really care about it
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While waiting for the four-star hotel project in a disused wing of the Morvan hospital, ATI has launched the transformation of the former Caisse d’Épargne, opposite the station. This will be the Voltaire residence. The Bank of France will move there. Other offices are planned as well as accommodation on the upper floors. Plus one raised, an emerging trend in Brest, for a 225m2 apartment! “What will make it unique in Brest, for me, is its 360-degree view” of the city, the harbor and therefore the station. Delivery, undoubtedly, this summer.
“I like Brel, Brassens but also Manu Chao! »
No question for him, therefore, of stopping. “I’m not a handyman. I hate sitting in front of my TV. I don’t have enough time to read,” he admits. “Music (Verdi, of course!), cinema… I love Brel, Brassens but also Manu Chao, I love it! », confides the one we meet every year at the Ilophone festival in Ouessant.
André Tesan combines his “passion for riding” and his taste for music by going down, every year, also to the Moroccan desert “to lend a hand to a festival. I bring school supplies there.” All this does not prevent physical activity. “I do a lot of walking but never alone. A little golf too.”
“I’m crazy about football! “, still proclaims this “small partner of Stade Brestois 29” who was traveling to Barcelona and matches at Guingamp in the Champions League. “But when there is a France-Italy, I am 100% French! The Italians are not playing well. And I’m French, of Italian origin! And it was the school of the Republic that made me. I really care about it.”
