Kravis Center

William A. Meyer

William A. Meyer is the second Chairman in the 25-year history of the Kravis Center board. Mr. Meyer has been a resident of Palm Beach since 1978.  Following his graduation from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, The London School of Economics and Georgetown Law School, Mr. Meyer became a member of the New York and Florida Bars and a specialist in real property law with a New York City law firm.

In 1976, he accepted the position of Vice President-Real Estate and Law for Servico, Inc., a small publicly traded hotel company. Over the next 12 years Servico grew to become one of the largest independent hotel companies in the United States with 58 hotels in its portfolio. Before selling his interest and resigning in mid-1988, Mr. Meyer served as Servico’s President and Chief Executive Officer.

Mr. Meyer is presently Chairman of Meyer Jabara Hotels with offices in Danbury, Connecticut and West Palm Beach. Since 1978, he and Richard Jabara have expanded their hotel portfolio to include 26 hotels with more than 4,700 rooms in 12 states. The hotels range in size from 70 rooms to 500 rooms and are operated under licenses from Marriott, Hilton, Sheraton and Holiday Inns. Revenues for Meyer Jabara Hotels have exceeded $200 million for the past several years.

Mr. Meyer has also been involved in companies unrelated to the hotel industry. In 1997, he acquired a controlling interest in CRSA Holdings, which provides management, development and marketing services to 25 continuing-care retirement communities across the country. During his tenure as Chairman, new communities were built in Chapel Hill, N.C.; Memphis, Tenn.; Annapolis, Md.; Portland, Ore.; Tulsa, Okla.; Sea Island, Ga. and Palm Beach Gardens. After serving as Chairman of the company for eight years, Mr. Meyer sold his interest, but retained ownership and management of Devonshire at PGA National, an 800,000-square-foot senior community in Palm Beach Gardens and Devonshire at Wellington Green, a 1.1 million-square-foot community in Wellington. 

Within Palm Beach County, Mr. Meyer has developed a number of other real estate projects, including the Interstate Plaza office building in Boca Raton; the 1601 Belvedere office building in West Palm Beach; The Dunes of Ocean Ridge oceanfront condominium in Ocean Ridge; Jupiter Square shopping center in Jupiter; The Residences of Windsor Court in Palm Beach; the 1,600-acre Fox Property in West Palm Beach and the 500-acre Crestwood Lakes residential development in Royal Palm Beach, now known as Madison Green. 

Mr. Meyer and his wife, Denise, were one of five families who founded Temple Judea, a reform synagogue in Palm Beach Gardens.

Mr. Meyer is the former Vice Chairman of the Board of Trustees of JFK Medical Center and the past Chairman of the Florida Chapter of the Young Presidents’ Organization. He is the past Chairman of the Quantum Foundation, the twelfth-largest charitable foundation in the State of Florida and continues to serve as a member of the Executive Committee and Chairman of its Investment Committee. He is also a member of the Executive Committee of the Meyer Jewish Academy in West Palm Beach. 

Mr. Meyer was elected to the Kravis Center’s Board of Directors in 2004. He has served as Vice Chairman of the board and Chairman of the Finance Committee. He also serves on the board’s Executive Committee, Investment Committee, Governance Committee and on the Corporate Partners Executive Committee. He and his wife are Founder Members.

Mr. Meyer also serves on the Board of Overseers of the School of Social Policy and Practice at the University of Pennsylvania. For the past two years, he has co-chaired “Men’s Night Out” at the Palm Beach County Convention Center, a fund-raising and educational evening for the Jewish Federation of Palm Beach County.
 
Mr. Meyer is the recipient of the Haym Salomon Award from the Anti-Defamation League and is most proud of having won the Golf Club Championship at the Palm Beach Country Club four times. He and Denise have two children, Candice, an MBA student at Barry University and A.J., a student at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.