Chaparral Suites Hotel in Scottsdale is truly a family business.

The general manager, recently elected Scottsdale Councilman Tom Silverman, co-owns the hotel along with his father, Ray; his brother, Richard; and sister, Carol, who is the hotel’s director of food and beverage.

The hotel, located on the corner of Scottsdale and Chaparral Roads, also caters to families, as well as business travelers and groups, Silverman says.

Perhaps even more accommodating than the average family, the 311-room Chaparral Suites Hotel offers guests a complimentary, cooked-to-order breakfast every morning, as well as a two-hour manager’s reception every evening. The all-suite hotel also offers 24-hour complimentary airport transportation.

The family has owned this land since they first came to Scottsdale in 1953.

“I asked my dad why he picked Scottsdale,” Tom Silverman says. “He looked in downtown Phoenix, downtown Mesa and Scottsdale. Something told him that Scottsdale was special and that’s where he needed to be.

“I’m happy that he picked Scottsdale,” he adds.

As a child, Silverman assisted his father with front desk and maintenance duties at the family-owned Paradise Valley Guest Ranch. He graduated from Arizona State University in 1968, with a degree in business management. He continued at the Guest Ranch and later became manager.

In 1978, the Guest Ranch closed and, after remodeling throughout 1979, became a Granada Royal Hometel. In 1984, the hotel became an Embassy Suites Resort.

In November 1999, the Embassy Suites contract expired and the hotel became independently-owned and renamed Chaparral Suites Hotel.

“That’s the only difference, the name change,” Silverman says. “Everything else is the same. Same ownership, same management, same amenities.”

Some hotel guests, including winter visitors who stay at the hotel for eight weeks at a time, have been staying there since 1980, Silverman says.

In December 1999, the hotel opened the Chaparral Grand Ballroom, a state-of-the-art conference center with 11,200 square feet of function space to accommodate 1,400 guests for a reception or more than 900 guests if set banquet style. An additional 6,600-square-foot foyer provides a variety of private entryways to the ballroom.

For Passover, the hotel’s restaurant, the Fourth Floor Grille, is offering a holiday dinner on April 19. The menu includes traditional holiday foods and costs $18.95 for adults and $9.95 for children 6 to 10 years old. Although there is no formal seder, says Carol Silverman, guests are welcome to hold a seder at their own table.

Tom Silverman is a member of Temple Beth Israel in Scottsdale, where he became a bar mitzvah at the temple’s second location, at 10th Avenue and Flower Street in Central Phoenix. He has three adult sons – Matthew, a Phoenix attorney; Michael, who works in the hotel’s sales department; and Joel, a navy pilot – and six grandchildren.

He says one of the biggest lessons that he learned from his Jewish upbringing is ethics. “(Judaism) teaches ethics and being ethical in your life,” he says.

“I think Jewish people are so well known about giving back to others less fortunate and we’ve always done that in my family,” Silverman says.

An example of this is the hotel’s participation in a charity event in which restaurants donate half of their profits from one dish to Waste Not, an organization that helps feed the homeless.

As another way to help the community, the family established The Silverman Family Foundation, which provides funding to many local charities, scholarships and fund-raisers. His family also provides scholarships for the nursing program at Scottsdale Community College.

More proof of Silverman’s commitment to Scottsdale is his recent election to the Scottsdale City Council on March 15. He says that it’s important to him to give back to the community.

“This town has been so good to us, we’ve got to give back.”

This article first appeared in Jewish News of Greater Phoenix.