Zilber money comes with hope

Philanthropist optimistic about revitalizing areas

By BILL GLAUBER
bglauber@journalsentinel.com

Posted: May 13, 2008

Milwaukee philanthropist Joseph Zilber is an optimist.

Monday, the 90-year-old son of immigrants from Eastern Europe officially announced he was giving $50 million over the next 10 years to transform the quality of life in Milwaukee's low-income neighborhoods.

Zilber also made a vow, of sorts, to stick around and see how the program - the Zilber Neighborhood Initiative - helps Milwaukee progress in the early decades of the 21st century.

"In 10 years, I will be 100 years old," he said during a presentation in the City Hall rotunda. "I hope to be with you again, at that time, to mark the first decade of the Zilber Neighborhood Initiative, and to celebrate our common achievement."

Zilber has high hopes for a program that aims to create a $200 million pool of resources to benefit up to 10 city neighborhoods. He's kicking in the first $50 million and is seeking funds from others. The plan is to leverage money and resources to revitalize neighborhoods.

"From everything I know right now and from all the people that I have talked to, I believe the city shakers will be with me on this program and will come up with their funds," Zilber said during a news conference.

"These funds alone, $50 million, cannot do the job," he added. "I know that. But with everybody in the city coming along and doing it and providing funds it will work. We're going to hit it a different way. We're going to hit it from the bottom up instead of the top down. We will give the funds where they will do the most good."

Zilber, a real estate developer, announced several extraordinary gifts within the last year, including a $30 million donation to the Marquette University Law School.

He said his late wife, Vera, served as a motivator for his charitable efforts.

"We were married 63 years," he said. "We had a little pact between us that everything that we have will go to charity. And I tell you, one day I woke up and said to myself, 'I'm 90 years old . . . and instead of leaving it to all the trustees to give away, I said, I'd like to have the fun of giving it away myself.' "

Milwaukee remains close to Zilber's heart.

"Why do I like it? Well, I was born on 10th and Meinecke," he said. "It was then a neighborhood of poor people. My folks worked very hard. We had a grocery store. My mother worked from 6 in the morning till 10 at night. There were days that they didn't take in $3. I know that. My father had three jobs, and he was working all the time. And my parents instilled in me hard work.

"Fact is, when I went to Marquette University we certainly didn't have enough for tuition," he added. "I was paying Marquette $1 a week for tuition. I got a wonderful education there."

Zilber said the initiative in Milwaukee differs greatly from the Great Society programs of the 1960s, when then-President Lyndon Johnson initiated a war on poverty.

"The Great Society of the '60s was mainly done by government funds," he said. "This is not government funds. There seems somehow or other when government gets involved it's hard. It's very hard for them. When we're involved you can control it."

Susan Lloyd, who heads a consulting firm in Evanston, Ill., will help lead the initiative. A similar program in Chicago, supported by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, could serve as a model for the work in Milwaukee.

"The approach that was used in Chicago that I believe will work well in Milwaukee is one where there is a major investor in a city neighborhood who is willing to be patient and see things happen and encourage others to participate," Lloyd said.

Lloyd said that over the spring and summer months she and Zilber will "reach out to additional people" for ideas about how to shape the initiative.

"We're very interested in what works and what doesn't," she said.

She also urged neighborhood groups and others seeking grants to "wait and see what the guidelines are (for the initiative) and see where we'll devote our resources."

From the May 13, 2008 editions of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
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Editorial: Helping hands for Milwaukee

Real estate magnate Joseph Zilber gives $50 million to his hometown to spark change. It should inspire matching generosity from others.

From the Journal Sentinel

 

Posted: May 10, 2008

Money, as Joseph Zilber knows firsthand from decades of making huge sums of it, can't buy everything. But what it can buy, when spent wisely, is hope, especially for Milwaukeeans whose stores of that precious commodity nearly have run dry.

So in keeping with the giving back to his hometown that he started last year, Milwaukee's newest philanthropist will announce on Monday the formation of an intriguing initiative aimed at revitalizing some of the city's poorest neighborhoods, primed by a $50 million gift from the Zilber Family Foundation.

Zilber hopes that his gift will prompt other individuals and foundations to donate to the cause as well with the goal of eventually raising a pool of $200 million.

We urge the community to pitch in.

As large a pot of money as that is, even Zilber knows it can only go so far. His plan is to use it to leverage other private and public dollars to strengthen local organizations and support specific community plans and projects in up to 10 neighborhoods on Milwaukee's north and south sides over the next five years.

Zilber plans to borrow many of the innovative ideas that have been used successfully in Chicago to revitalize neighborhoods there through the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation's New Communities Program.

What we like about that program is that it's a community-based, bottom-up approach to urban redevelopment rather than the more traditional top-down method. To ensure that many of those lessons and ideas are incorporated here, the Zilber Family Foundation has decided to hire Susan Lloyd as senior adviser. Lloyd, who operates her own consulting firm, served as a program director for the MacArthur Foundation for 13 years and was one of the architects of the New Communities Program.

Zilber already has touched bases with other potential donors for the remaining $150 million, according to his spokesman, Mike Mervis, and believes that many of them will step up.

As critical as the money is, what's equally important is what it represents. Namely, that people such as Zilber, a highly successful real estate developer with the capital and influence to make a difference, haven't given up on Milwaukee - even though large swaths of the city are in the throes of seemingly intractable problems such as poverty, violent crime, drug addiction, double-digit unemployment, teenage pregnancy and fractured families.

Those woes, as Zilber rightly has noted in the past and will reiterate on Monday, have turned some people into confirmed skeptics. They are convinced that these neighborhoods and by extension their residents - even the children - have no future. We couldn't disagree more, and it's reassuring to see that Zilber feels the same way. Even at 90, Zilber retains the hopefulness of the young.

Milwaukee, as he plans to say Monday, "may have the best chance in decades to engineer a new future for itself and its citizens." He says he's basing that optimism on the civic and community leaders who he says are "working hard each and every day to improve conditions" in the city.

Mayor Tom Barrett and Common Council President Willie Hines will join Zilber at a news conference at 10:30 a.m. Monday in City Hall. Barrett said Zilber continues to impress him with his philanthropy, enthusiasm and desire to see Milwaukee prosper.

"He's amazingly engaged for a person of any age, much less one who is 90 years old," Barrett said Friday.

A fitting description, especially when one considers that last year alone Zilber gave $10 million to establish a School of Public Health at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, $30 million to the Marquette University Law School and $1 million to the Milwaukee Boys & Girls Club.

We asked the mayor why he thinks Zilber's initiative will succeed when so many federal anti-poverty initiatives going back to the 1960s failed to meet expectations. Barrett, who served in Congress before becoming mayor, had a simple answer:

"There's no government red tape," the mayor said, adding that red tape doomed many well-intentioned federal programs before they even got off the ground.

Mervis said the New Communities approach, with the emphasis on turning around neighborhoods by focusing on results and practical goals, was especially appealing to his boss because it fits his pragmatic nature and intense dislike, as a child of the Great Depression, for wasting money.

"You support what works and get rid of what doesn't," Mervis said. Given the scale and urgency of the problems the city faces and the fact that no one's pockets are bottomless, it's hard to argue with that kind of pragmatism.

We hope other philanthropists, institutions and foundations join Zilber in investing in a more sound Milwaukee. The region's well-being depends on Milwaukee's health.

And we extend a special thanks to Zilber for generosity that speaks of a good heart and a genuine love for his hometown.

This special report was reported and written for the Editorial Board by Milwaukee Journal Sentinel editorial writer Jerry Resler.

From the May 11, 2008 editions of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
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