Harris Rosen is pictured in front of Tangelo Park Elementary School.
Born and raised on New York City’s lower eastside, he recounts how he lived his childhood and adolescence with his family in a small high-rise apartment in an impoverished neighborhood. After graduating from high school, he attended Cornell University where he received a B.S. degree from the School of Hotel Administration. Following college, he served three years in the U.S. Army as an officer in Germany and South Korea; and then completed the Advanced Management course at the University of Virginia’s Graduate School of Business on a Hilton Corp. scholarship. He began his hotel career at the Waldorf Astoria in New York City as a convention salesman. He continued with the Hilton Hotel Corporation and occupied various management positions in some of the larger Hilton Hotels. His career eventually led him to the Disney Company in California as Director of Hotel Planning. In 1974, he left Disney to purchase a 256-room Quality Inn in Orlando. Today, with 728 rooms, it is the second largest Quality Inn in the chain. Along the way, he acquired several other hotel prop-
erties and over the course of the last 30 years, his company has grown from 256 rooms to 6,300. About four years ago, he acquired 250 acres of land near the Orlando/Orange County Convention Center. On the site, he developed his newest property, the 1,500room Rosen Shingle Creek resort that opened on his birthday, September 9, 2006, and is the location of Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity’s 101st Anniversary Convention. Harris Rosen has been chosen by the Fraternity to receive its highest award given to a nonmember—the Alpha Award of Honor—during the 2007 Convention for his extraordinary service to the general welfare of the community and his contributions to humanity.
Duplicating Tangelo Park’s Success Harris Rosen sees Tangelo Park’s turnaround as a combined effort between those who care about the community. “The neighborhood has to care and this neighborhood association has been fantastic,” he said.
The Sphinx: www.APA1906.net
Spring • Summer 2007
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