Manuel D. Mayerson

Manuel D. Mayerson was a visionary, creative, hardworking, and optimistic businessman with a huge positive personality, as well as being a loving, dedicated family man and engaged community member. 

As a child of the Great Depression, Manuel was wired to work hard, and that work ethic was amplified when, as a young 29-year-old with a wife and 2 small children; he was diagnosed with malignant melanoma and given 6 months to live.

Manuel underwent traumatic experimental surgery and was told that the success of the treatment could only be determined if he survived for 10 years.  As the sole income producer he needed to immediately get to work despite persistent pain and fatigue in order to provide for his beloved family. He beat the odds and lived another 60 years to the age of 90! 

His business career is storied.  Early on he fixed up small buildings that he was able to acquire and sell, and then took a job at the Frederick Schmidt Company, a well-known Cincinnati real estate company and there he quickly began building a reputation as a young outstanding talent.  As a result of opportunities that began coming his way, he started the Mayerson Company in 1949, at the age of 27.  He was a successful broker who had a special talent for figuring out how to get parties to find agreement, earning him the reputation of a deal closer.   

Onward & Upward

In the early 1960’s, soon after the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956 was signed into law, he joined with some other early visionaries who envisioned how interstate highways would spawn new residential communities that would need to have convenient shopping. 

He, along with these other pioneers, founded the International Council of Shopping Centers, and he began building shopping centers locally, first strip centers and then indoor shopping malls.  Across his career he owned, brokered, developed, and managed most all types of real estate assets and became known for his ability to see how something could be accomplished, his civic commitment, his virtuous character, and for making people feel good. 

Manuel received numerous accolades for his business accomplishments and for the philanthropic accomplishments of the Manuel D. and Rhoda Mayerson Foundation which he and his wife formally established in 1984.