Sheldon H. Ginsburg & Perry J. Snyderman - The Men
by Rosalie E. Leposky
Long before Perry J. Snyderman, RRP, and Sheldon H. Ginsburg, CPA, RRP, heard of the timeshare concept, they had forged a personal and business relationship that today remains the central driving force behind The Shell Group, Inc.
With Snyderman as president and Ginsburg as chairman of the board, The Shell Group remains a strong independent entity in an era of industry-wide acquisitions and rearrangements.
The two are very different, say people who know both of them well. "Perry's a bright man, with a mind that goes 100 miles an hour. He has great control of the English language and presents himself well," says James M. Watkins, founder and president of Winners Circle Resorts International, Inc. and a former joint-venture partner with The Shell Group. "Shelly is quieter, and always thinking. His mind is a human calculator."
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"Perry and Shelly both are tall men. Shelly has lost a lot of weight by developing healthy eating habits. Perry is very athletic for a man his size. He's a fast downhill skier."
Hyde Park Origins
Perry James Snyderman was born in Chicago in 1932 and grew up in the city's Hyde Park neighborhood near the University of Chicago. He is the oldest son of the late Max and Frances Snyderman.
Max Snyderman owned a men's clothing store, one of hundreds of shops in the Merchandise Mart, a 25-story Art Deco structure built in 1930 by Chicago retailer Marshall Field, and purchased in 1946 by Ambassador Joseph P. Kennedy, father of U.S. President John F. Kennedy. "The space my father's shop, the Merchandise Mart Shop For Men, once occupied is now part of a two-story shopping center," says Snyderman.
Snyderman's brothers are:
A 1950 graduate of Hyde Park High School, Perry Snyderman met his wife, the former Elaine Pomper, in a high school French class. "I was attracted by Perry's great sense of humor," she says.
Mrs. Snyderman received Bachelor and Master of Arts degrees in English literature from the University of Chicago. She is an English literature and writing adjunct in the English department of the College of Lake County, in the Chicago suburb of Grayslake; and a director of the Highland Park Community Foundation, an umbrella organization that supports social service and cultural programs, with a special emphasis on young people.
In 1992, Mrs. Snyderman and Margaret Thomas Witkovsky co-edited Line Five: Internal Passport: Jewish Family Odysseys from the USSR to the USA, published by Chicago Review Press. "Our book is an oral history of 19 Chicago-area families," says Mrs. Snyderman. "I've also published freelance travel and art articles and children's television scripts."
The Snydermans share a passion for travel. They enjoyed exploring England and France while Mrs. Snyderman researched a biographical novel set in Montparnasse, France. The book is a fictionalized account of a circle of artists that included Jules Pascin (1885-1930), a Bulgarian-born French artist who lived briefly in the United States just before World War One. Best known for his paintings of women, he probably suffered from manic-depressive illness. He hanged himself on the eve of an important one-man show.
"I saw Pascin's sketches, and wanted to learn more," Mrs. Snyderman says. "Many art museums have Pascin's paintings, including the Art Institute of Chicago and the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. Although my book is not a scholarly tome, it is carefully researched."
A Global Focus
In the 1950s, the St. Lawrence Seaway had just opened, stimulating the growth of international trade in Chicago. Snyderman attended Bradley University, a small liberal-arts school in Peoria, Illinois, that offered a degree in economics and had a school of international studies. He earned his Bachelor of Arts degree in economics in 1954 and his Juris Doctor degree from DePaul University Law School in Chicago in 1958. During his senior year at Bradley, Snyderman was president of Alpha Epsilon Pi social fraternity.
The Snydermans married in 1955, during his first year of law school. "At the time,
law school was the best education I could get," he says.
The Snydermans have three children:
A Hard Decision
Snyderman was drafted into the Army between his second and third years of law school, at the end of the Korean conflict and just in time for the Hungarian Revolution. At the time, he had two small children. "I spent 21 months teaching psychological warfare to senior U.S. and Allied officers in what is now known as the Special Forces School at Fort Bragg, North Carolina," he recalls. "I turned down a lieutenant's rank to get out early. Anyone with a Bachelor of Arts degree was asked to teach. I taught communications and learned the importance of being able to communicate."
While in law school, Snyderman worked with children at a Chicago-area youth center, sold men's clothes (but not in his father's store), and in his third year clerked with the law firm of Rudnick & Wolfe, where he later became a partner.
Harry Rudnick and Sydney Wolfe formed Rudnick & Wolfe in 1936. One founding partner handled real-estate law, the other corporate law, and they hired a stenographer. "When I joined the firm we had six lawyers," recalls Snyderman. "Both of the original partners are now deceased. Two of Harry's sons and one of his grandsons are with the firm. In 1976, Rudnick, Wolfe, Snyderman, and Foreman dropped the last two names from the firm's name and institutionalized its original name."
For 20 years, from the early 1970's to the early 1990's, Snyderman oversaw Rudnick & Wolfe's enormous growth as the firm's managing partner. Today it has about 280 lawyers, 58 paralegals, and 330 non-professional administrative employees in three locations and under two names - Rudnick & Wolfe in Tampa, Florida, and Chicago, Illinois; and, since 1996, Rudnick, Wolfe, Epstein & Zeidman in Washington D.C.
"According to Crane's Business Journal, we are Chicago's eighth-or ninth- largest law firm," says Snyderman. "We have 18 lawyers in Tampa, 33 in Washington, and 229 in Chicago." The firm is well-known for its national and international leadership in franchise and distribution law, serving clients in over 60 industries that offer franchising as a method of distributing goods and services.
"Forty percent of Rudnick & Wolfe's attorneys exclusively practice real-estate law," says Snyderman. Other principal practice areas include acquisitions, alternative-dispute solutions, antitrust, corporate finances, insurance, intellectual property, international transactions, litigation, labor, mergers, securities, and tax law.
A Master of Negotiations
Attorney Peter A. Levy, a real-estate law expert and Rudnick & Wolfe partner who joined the firm in 1976, first met Snyderman while being interviewed for a job. "I was assigned, in the pre-timesharing days, to work for William A. Zolla, a partner, on The Shell Group projects including apartments, hotels, and retail and commercial space," says Levy. He recalls coming early for a meeting at which The Shell Group hoped to purchase a building for conversion to condominiums.
"I though the deal would fail because of potential rough issues that could kill it," Levy says. "At the start of the meeting everyone in the room was on one side or the other, but in the end each participant thought he had obtained what he wanted. That day we saw a master of the art of negotiations -- developer Perry Snyderman, acting as his own attorney."
On another occasion, Levy recalls, "Perry, another associate, and I were reviewing timeshare documents, including condominium declarations for Orange Tree. Even under a typical heavy workload, Perry understood the context of the documents and read them carefully enough to see and correct fine points of grammar."
A 15-minute meeting in Snyderman's office generally takes half an hour because he takes his phone calls, follows all issues, and makes sure they are resolved. "As managing partner, his style is to do whatever it takes to get the job done," Levy says. "When Perry ran partnership meetings, he was adept at seeing that everyone took part in discussions, and at shaping the resulting consensus."
In his leisure time, Snyderman likes to ride horseback and to ski in Snowmass, Colorado. "For years, every Saturday morning when both Perry and Shelly were in Chicago, they used to go horseback-riding together," recalls Loraine G. Maroon, a former Vistana executive.
Snyderman enjoys good food and drink. "I want to live fast, die young, and leave a chubby corpse," he declares. "I was the first member of Art Zimand's cigar club."
Professionally Active
Snyderman has long been active in timeshare industry affairs. He is the current chairman of the American Resort Development Association's ethics committee and is proud of what ARDA and the timeshare industry have accomplished. He plans to become more involved in ARDA's international activities.
Other Snyderman pro bono activities have included service as:
West Side Story
Sheldon H. Ginsburg was born in 1938 and grew up in the Garfield Park neighborhood on Chicago's West Side, the eldest son of Max and Sophia Ginsburg, both of whom spent many years as the proprietors of small retail businesses. Sophia owned RB Clothiers, a women's clothing store on Milwaukee Avenue at Division Street and Ashland Avenue. Max owned Airway Fountain and Tobacco Store at Wacker Drive and Wabash Avenue.
"Dad's shop was in downtown Chicago. It was popular with the luncheon crowd," Sheldon says. "When I was about 15, Dad gave up his shop and started selling real estate. In the 1970s my parents retired to Plantation, Florida." They are still there. Max is 93, Sophia 84.
Ginsburg's younger brother, attorney Allen Ginsburg, 53, is a Rudnick & Wolfe partner, specializing in corporation and franchise law."
A 1959 graduate of Chicago's DePaul University, Ginsburg earned a bachelor's degree in commerce and his CPA in 1960. While attending DePaul, Ginsburg joined three national honoraries: Beta Alpha Psi, a professional accounting fraternity; Beta Gamma Sigma, a national honor society in business; and Pi Gamma Mu, International Honor Society in Social Sciences.
Back to School
About four years ago, Ginsburg says, he heard a quote -- the source of which he has forgotten -- that changed his life. "When you're through learning, you are through."
Ever since graduating from DePaul, he had wanted to go back to school for his Master of Business Administration degree. Now he has done it. Thirty-eight years later, he is an MBA evening student at the Keller Graduate School of Management center in Lake Forest, Illinois, one of 24 Keller sites in eight states. Based in Oakbrook Terrace, Illinois, Keller offers four non-traditional masters programs. Its MBA students attend class two nights a week for 50 weeks a year, and do about 12 hours of homework a week. "I expect to graduate in June, and have been asked to consider teaching after graduation," Ginsburg says.
"Part of my motivation in going back to school is to learn new ways to do business. We cannot continue to do timesharing business as we did in the 1970's, 1980's, or even most of the 1990's in the same old way. Timesharing will not survive without change. High sales and marketing costs have to be changed."
Working while going to school is not a new experience for Ginsburg. "While attending DePaul, I attended morning classes from 8:30 to 11:30 AM and worked in the afternoon for Harvey Olson, owner of Olson Travel. Mr. Olson was a bachelor and treated me like the son he never had. The summers of my sophomore and junior years of college, I worked in Europe as an assistant tour conductor. My early experience working for Olson coupled with my CPA are the foundation for where I am today."
Long an active member of the American Resort Development Association, Ginsburg has served as a member of the ARDA board and as president of The International Foundation for Timesharing.
Children's Careers
In June of 1959, Ginsburg married Joan Kostinsky. They were divorced in 1974. Their three children are Howard Ginsburg, 37; Linda Lazarus, 35; and Steve Ginsburg, 29.
Howard earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in psychology from Arizona State University in Tempe. He is marketing director for Orange Tree Golf and Conference Center in Scottsdale, Arizona, a Shell Group property. "While attending ASU in the early 1980s, Howard worked for an Arizona real-estate agency, buying apartments, medical and office buildings, and shopping centers, until the real-estate industry died," says Sheldon Ginsburg.
"Perry and I worked with Anthony H. Genth, now co-owner of Alton Leisure Industries LLC, in the late 1980s through a joint venture -- Shell/Remic International of Calabasas, California -- to provide planning, marketing, and sales services to resort projects in Canada, Europe, Latin America, Mexico and the United States. Howard went to Ixtapá and Mazatlán, Mexico to work with Tony on a converted Holiday Inn project, the Hideaway Beach Club. Tony served as Howard's mentor and taught him about timesharing.
"When the Shell/Remic joint venture ended, Howard returned to Arizona and spent two years searching for potential timeshare properties, including a year and half on Orange Tree. Orange Tree is completely Howard's baby. All we did was sign the checks."
Linda is married to Michael Lazarus, a member of the Orange Tree marketing department. She earned a Bachelor of Science degree in commerce from Indiana University and worked until recently for United Travel, a large Hawaii Tour operator. On December 14, 1997, Linda gave birth to Zachary S., Sheldon Ginsburg's first grandchild.
Steve Ginsburg is an aspiring actor and model with an Associate in Arts degree from the Pasadena campus of the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York City. For the last five years, when he wasn't acting, Steve worked as head of guest services at the Inn of Chicago. He recently moved back to California and is going to work for the Peacock Suites Resort's marketing department.
Leaving Chicago
In 1984, Ginsburg married his administrative assistant, now Rosemaree Ginsburg. "Rosemaree knows more about timesharing than most other people," he says.
After starting their Hawaii project, Ginsburg was tired of living in cold weather, and the long hours traveling to Hawaii. "I wanted to move away from Chicago." he says. "In 1986, I sold my accounting practice to Laventhol and Horwath and moved to San Francisco."
The Ginsburgs liked the San Francisco area and northern California. He opened a small office in Tiburon, California, across the bay from San Francisco, and hired a secretary.
"Rosemaree wanted to operate a bed-and-breakfast inn with my help," he says. "After searching for a while, she found a 24-suite hotel at 2655 Hyde Street on Fisherman's Wharf. For three years we negotiated for the property." Along the way, the Ginsburgs discovered the inn was one of about 350 California sites grandfathered in under the California timeshare laws. It became The Suites at Fisherman's Wharf.
Shortly after the Bay area press published information on The Shell Group's first California project, a local real-estate broker contacted Ginsburg about another piece of property with timeshare zoning, "We bought the Inn at the Opera a month later," he says.
In 1991-1992 -- from San Francisco -- Ginsburg consulted with the Chicago-based public-accounting firm of Checkers, Simon & Rosner, affiliate of BKR International, which has 79 member firms with 132 offices worldwide.
Despite the opportunities they found in California, the Ginsburgs missed Chicago, and moved back in 1994.
Rosalie E. Leposky is managing partner of Ampersand Communications, a news-features syndicate based in Miami, Florida.
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Published in The Resort Trades, February 1998.