Joel Zemans was a two-time basketball All-American at the University of Chicago and a real estate developer who later led Lincoln Park-based Mid Town Bank Trust Co. for a quarter century during a time when the community bank established a reputation for lending to area groups that struggled to find financing. “He was thorough and honorable, and he always considered the people working for him and the people he was working for in the same way,” said Miles Berger, 95, who founded and served as chairman of Mid Town Bank. “He was a pleasure to be with and to work with. He had our complete confidence and trust.” Zemans, 84, died of natural causes Oct. 14 at Northwestern Memorial Hospital, said his son, Daniel. A Streeterville resident, Zemans previously lived in Hyde Park. Born Joel Falk Zemans in Chicago in 1941, Zemans grew up in an apartment on South Paxton Avenue in the South Shore neighborhood and moved to a home on South Crandon Avenue in the South Chicago neighborhood right before high school. He attained the level of Eagle Scout in 1955. He graduated in 1959 from South Shore High School, where he played basketball and baseball and was the boys’ sports editor for the school newspaper, the Shore Line. In 1958, he was chosen by four prep sportswriters and tournament officials to be his school’s representative to the Illinois Tech Prep basketball all-tournament team. Zemans got a bachelor’s degree from the University of Chicago in 1963 and an MBA from the U. of C. in 1965. While at the U. of C., Zemans established a reputation as one of the key players on the basketball team, which in 1961 won the NCAA small college championships’ Great Lakes regional tournament and posted the university’s best basketball record since the Big Ten title-winning 1908-1909 squad. The 1961 team lost in the NCAA college tournament’s quarterfinals, but Zemans nonetheless was awarded an honorable mention on The Associated Press’ 1961 basketball little All-American team. During his four years at the U. of C., Zemans was twice named an All-American, and his style of play made him one of the top scorers in university  history. He was inducted into U. of C.’s athletic hall of fame in 2006. Zemans began his career in commercial real estate. In 1971, he was named an executive vice president of Chicago Properties, a real estate development firm that specialized in the rehabilitation of multiunit residential properties and developed the Gold Coast high-rise at 100 E. Bellevue Place. In 1976, Zemans’ colleagues at Chicago Properties, Berger and his brother, Ronald Berger, asked Zemans to become CEO of Mid Town Bank Trust, a lending institution the Bergers formed in 1974 in the Lincoln Park neighborhood. Zemans told the Tribune in 1978 that he had been only “tangentially involved” in the start-up of the bank, but that upon taking the job, he felt he should concentrate a major part of lending efforts on the rehabilitation of existing properties. “Banks don’t normally get into rehabilitation,” Zemans told the Tribune in 1978. “There’s no question the risks can be greater. … But I have more background than the average banker in real estate and I felt there was a natural meshing of the needs of property owners and investors and banks.” In the 1970s, Lincoln Park was becoming gentrified, and Zemans financed many construction and renovation loans, said Julia Van Vliet, a vice president of commercial and residential loans at Gold Coast Bank who was a Mid Town Bank loan officer in the 1990s. “At Mid Town, they took on a different kind of risk from the bigger banks,” she said. “They would loan to theaters, restaurants and not-for-profits. The big banks didn’t do those kinds of loans. For example, Joel gave Steppenwolf Theatre its first loan.” As a community banker, Zemans was open to lending to groups that struggled to find loans elsewhere, colleagues said. Zemans provided loans to Sidetrack Chicago, a noted gay bar in what now is known as the Northalsted neighborhood. Art Johnston, Sidetrack Chicago’s founder and owner, said he initially struggled to procure loans from banks, and at the outset, he suspected it was “because we’re a bar and it’s a cash business.” Instead, Johnston said, he learned it was anti-gay bigotry. “Banks would barely talk to me, but they said no, it wasn’t because we were a bar,” Johnston said. “A friend said, ‘Go to Joel Zemans at Mid Town. He is known for looking more deeply and making interesting loans.’ Joel liked us and we liked Joel, and he was not bothered by the fact that we were gay. Joel listened to the story, talked to us and said, ‘I’m gonna loan you the money.’ They were our bank for many years, and treated us extraordinarily well. I never felt that Joel or anyone at Mid Town looked down on us because I was gay or had a bar. Our 800-square-foot bar is now a 15,000-square-feet bar.” Zemans’ son said his father believed lending to Sidetrack was both the right thing to do and a good business decision. “I know that, for him, it wasn’t like, ‘I’m out there trying to promote gay businesses,’” Daniel Zemans said. “It was, ‘This is an investment that makes sense, and I’m going to do it.’” Jackie Taylor, founder and artistic director of the Black Ensemble Theater Company on the North Side, recalled Zemans’ generosity in terms of donations, both individually and through the bank. “He was a very kind and loving and giving man,” Taylor said. “He helped the Black Ensemble Theater for years, but was also our friend. He was somebody that you could pick up the phone and say, ‘Joel, I just need to talk,’ and he would listen.” Declaring a need to “reurbanize” the city, Zemans in 1978 foresaw developers’ eventual gentrification of outlying areas such as  Logan Square and Uptown. “These are areas with beautiful and solid old houses, broad streets and good transportation that could become very popular again in the future,” he told the Tribune in 1978. “People buying in these areas are pioneers, but the thing is snowballing.” In the mid-1980s, Zemans was president of the Lincoln Park Chamber of Commerce. Even while leading Mid Town Bank, Zemans also continued working in real estate development on the side with the Berger family. In 1989, Zemans was part of a development group that acquired a 41-unit courtyard apartment building in the 2100 block of West North Avenue — called the Cloister of Wicker Park — which was converted to condominiums. However, Zemans’ greatest focus remained on increasing the footprint of Mid Town Bank, which by the 1990s had become a prime lender for community developers on the North Side. He oversaw the bank’s expansion in the 1990s into the Bucktown neighborhood with a branch there — the bank’s fourth location. “My father very much believed in the ‘doing well and doing good’ thing,” Daniel Zemans said. “He liked being able to help people out. He liked the challenge of it — asking more questions than anybody else and putting the puzzles together to help people.” Zemans led Mid Town Bank until its sale in 2001 to Mid America Bank. After that, he enjoyed traveling with his wife, skiing and attending sporting events, his son said. He also served on the boards of several real estate firms. Zemans also was involved in other areas of philanthropy. In 1990, he helped create Kenwood Academy’s Sara Spurlark Award, an annual scholarship in honor of a longtime assistant principal at Kenwood Academy and principal at Hyde Park’s William H. Ray School who retired in 1990 and died in 2012. Zemans worked closely with a fellow William H. Ray School parent, photographer Fred Stein, to set up the award. “Joel was instrumental in the founding and formation of that award and the committee that oversaw it for many years,” Stein said. In addition to his son, Zemans is survived by his wife of 59 years, Frances; two daughters, Rachel and Rebecca; and five grandchildren. A memorial service is being planned for 2026. Goldsborough is a freelance writer. ...read more read less