Affordable housing champion, businessman Harvey Vengroff dies

When Mark Vengroff was 15, in the mid 1990s, he bought his dad, Harvey Vengroff, a pair of wacky and wildly colorful Jams shorts for his birthday.

The elder Vengroff wore the shorts — with a Big Dog T-shirt — to a scheduled court hearing in Sarasota the next day, regarding one of Harvey Vengroff’s many real estate properties. “The judge asked my dad, ‘do you think you are respecting the court with that outfit?,” recalls Mark Vengroff. He told the judge, ‘my son bought me these shorts for my birthday yesterday. I would be disrespecting him if I didn’t wear them.’”

The judge, says Mark Vengroff, mumbled an OK and went on with the hearing.