Believe it or not, Joseph Zilber lost money on his first real estate deal. In the 1940s, Zilber built a home at North 39th Street and East Fairmount Avenue on Milwaukee’s north side. He sold the home for $5,950, taking a $100 loss on the project.
“That was about the end of the world for me,” he said.
However, Zilber said the experience taught him a lesson. He realized that he would have to think big to succeed in the real estate business.
He has done just that, transforming his company over several decades from startup to a massive real estate empire with $600 million in annual revenues.
Zilber founded Towne Realty, which is now operated by Zilber Ltd., in 1949.
The company built thousands of homes in Milwaukee for GIs returning home after World War II. Later, the firm purchased several office buildings in downtown Milwaukee.
As the years went on, Zilber kept expanding the company’s scope and its geographic reach. The firm has constructed and purchased apartment buildings, condominium developments, nursing homes, office buildings, industrial buildings, office parks and industrial parks.
When the real estate market was slow, the company did work on government contracts, including the construction of the first gantry at Cape Canaveral.
Seeing the population boom in the South and West, Zilber shifted the company’s focus to those regions. Today, the company remains headquartered in Milwaukee but also has regional offices in Phoenix, Honolulu, Roseville (Calif.), Burleson (Texas) and Cocoa Beach and Bradenton (Fla.), in addition to another office in Wauwatosa.
Zilber, 89, is still active with the company, playing a hands-on management role as founder and president. Zilber says he will probably never retire.
Now Zilber has taken on the difficult task of redeveloping the former Pabst brewery site in downtown Milwaukee. Zilber said he wants the project to be his legacy to Milwaukee and is doing it as a way to give back to his hometown. He pledges that the brewery will become a “wonderful” neighborhood to live, work and play in.
In recognition of his many achievements and the significant growth of his company from start-up to real estate behemoth, Joseph Zilber is this year’s recipient of the Small Business Times Bravo! Lifetime Achievement Award.
Zilber still calls Milwaukee home, but spends much of the year at his residence in Hawaii. He spoke recently from Hawaii via a teleconference with Small Business Times managing editor Andrew Weiland. Following are excerpts of that interview.
SBT: Congratulations on winning this lifetime achievement award. How do you feel about it?
Zilber: “We’ll, I’m glad I lived long enough to achieve it. You don’t get an award like this unless you live your life with the backing of your family, especially my wife, Vera, and the people that have been with me for so many years. They have worked so hard. I feel as though they are my second family. And without them, it would be impossible to achieve an award like this.”
SBT: Tell me how you started your career in the real estate business.
Zilber: “Back in late 1941, I graduated from the University of Marquette Law School at the top of my class. I wanted to marry my sweetheart. I went to what I considered the finest law firm in Milwaukee. They would not take me on. So I went into the real estate business and closed deals, $5 apiece. When I asked for a guarantee of $25 a week, I couldn’t get it, so I had to go out and start in the real estate business. I remember my first house. It was on 39th and Fairmount. I built it and sold it for $5,950. I lost $100. That was about the end of the world for me. But it taught me a lesson. It taught me that I cannot build one house. I’d have to build hundreds of houses, thousands of houses if you were to make anything out of the real estate business. So we went on and did that. Especially when the GI’s came home, we went ahead and sold many, many, many houses. And that’s how I got into the real estate business.”
SBT: Tell me about the steps you took to grow your company from those humble beginnings to what it has become today.
Zilber: “We had to have good people. We hired the best. The company is made up of lawyers, accountants, construction people, engineers and the like. Without all of those people, this could not have been done. I consider them the best company in the country. I feel that way. This company has never gone public because I didn’t want them to go public, because if it went public, it would be meeting criteria that in the real estate business you don’t meet. You have your ups and your downs. You take advantage of the ups and you survive during the downs. Without the people, without the banks, you cannot survive. One thing I want to tell you, for all of those listening, the banks are your lifeblood. You shake hands with a bank and tell them that you are going to pay them back on a certain date, you pay them back on that date. No matter how much it hurts, pay them back. With that, we deal with the same 20 banks we did 50 years ago. So we have a long-time record with them, and we’re able to keep going at all times.”
SBT: You started your career in the Milwaukee area, but later you shifted your focus to the South and the West. Obviously, that was a big part of your success. Why did you decide to do that, and how did you know it was going to be so successful?
Zilber: “We went to areas that we thought were great areas. Florida, Arizona, Nevada, California, Illinois, Texas, Hawaii. We thought that that is where it would happen. And we were right. But with it of course, we did many other things. We were the fourth-largest nursing home business in the country. And to this day, our nursing homes today, by selling them to Extendicare, they are the largest nursing home (company) in the country. We tried many businesses. There are many businesses that we were in. But I love the real estate business, and the real estate business has been good to me. So, today we build in these areas, industrial and housing and all of the areas.
“But when we were in the prime, we did government contracts when things were slower. We did the first gantry at Cape Canaveral. The first gantry for the Space Shuttles. I was there last year, and that gantry still stands. We had that contract, I believe, for $2.5 million. Today, they have built one next to it for over $500 million. So ours is put away in the background, but we did many, many things for the government. We built the missile sites in Fargo, N.D. We built in Point Barrow, Alaska, where you can only get in 19 days of the year, we built a total energy plant. Today, I am very proud to say that that plant services the entire city of Barrows, which is good. We did many things for the government. That’s when things were kind of slow, we jumped in there and built government housing and that sort of thing. So we took advantage of a situation when there was nothing else that we could do.”
SBT: You talked about the importance of having a strong team. A lot of your top executives have been with your company for decades. What did you do to create such loyalty that these people feel with your company?
Zilber: “Well, when we are loyal to our people, they are loyal to us. We have people who have been there 50 years, 40 years, 30 years. Nobody ever leaves us. I think that shows that, hopefully we treat them right. They are part of the company. That’s why the company has grown so much because everybody looks at it as it’s their own. And that’s one of the reasons, probably the main reason, that the company has grown like it has.”
SBT: Your latest adventure in Milwaukee is taking on the task of redeveloping the Pabst brewery. Why did you decide to do that?
Zilber: “Many people said I’m nuts. But, very frankly, why not? I’ve lived in Milwaukee practically all of my life, and I want to give something back to the city if I can. And we will do our best to make it, we know that we will make it, it will be a great place, a great place to live, a great place to work and a great place for entertainment. We will have everything that we can possibly do to make it a wonderful place. It won’t be done in a year, it will take a number of years. We will sell (buildings) to the public, we hope. Anything that they don’t (buy) we will (redevelop). It is a historical place. We feel it will be great for the city of Milwaukee. It picks up the edges of the downtown, and we hope it will go beyond and across the highway and open up that entire area of the city of Milwaukee (for development).”
SBT: After all of these years, didn’t you ever want to retire? Why do you want to stay involved?
Zilber: “I did retire. I retired when I was about 45 years old. It lasted about a week. Hey, come on back, you know you’re not happy in retirement, come on back and let’s do it the way we always did it, and I did. I don’t think I’ll ever retire. I’ll keep on working, and hopefully I’ll be talking to you in another 10 years. I hope so. At least I figure it would be nice to be around 10 years from today and see what everything is like.”
SBT: What is the future for your company?
Zilber: “The company has a very bright future. I’ve been very thorough with what I expect and what my people expect, my people, our family, expect. I’ve made very thorough arrangements for the company to go on after I have passed with ownership in part to all of the employees. The company will go on.”
Location: 710 N. Plankinton Ave., Milwaukee
Industry: Real estate development and management.
Number of employees: 600
Web page: www.thetownegroup.com
