In 2016, Mr. Hovitz (center right) was joined by fellow CB1 members Susan Cole, Roger Byron, and Alice Blank at a protest during a City Council meeting, to oppose a plan that allowed developers to monetize more than 100,000 square feet of public amenity space. | |
Paul Hovitz, who served on Community Board 1 (CB1) for 27 years, spearheaded the development of nine new schools in Lower Manhattan, and championed dozens of issues of vital concern to the community, died on December 14 at age 78 after a multi-year battle with pancreatic cancer arising from his exposure to toxins released by the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.
CB1 chair Tammy Meltzer said, “Paul dedicated decades of volunteer service to CB1, playing a pivotal role in shaping our neighborhood. His tireless efforts to ensure our children had access to schools that were built, funded, protected, and expanded stand out as a cornerstone of his work. His legacy and the profound impact he made on our community will be remembered for years to come.”
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Bob Townley, executive director of Manhattan Youth (an organization for which Mr. Hovitz served on the board of directors) said, “Paul helped build the Downtown Community Center, and was an instrumental leader in the School Overcrowding Task Force that helped build the Peck Slip and Spruce Street Schools. But he was more than just an organizer and advocate. He was my teacher, my friend. I will miss him as if I lost a right arm in fighting for the children and seniors of this community.”
Tricia Joyce, chair of CB1’s Youth & Education Committee (a post once held by Mr. Hovitz) said, “as a retired schoolteacher and special education provider, his insight and experience were invaluable in the process of advocating for and getting new schools for our community. Paul himself sited two of them: Peck Slip and the new P.S. 150 on Trinity Place. His intelligence, steady nature, constant presence, and commitment to the cause got us through those days. When I look around at all our new schools that have opened, as well as the community that has grown here since September 11, I see Paul’s imprint on all of it. He embodied the term community activist, with a heart as big as Manhattan. He will be deeply missed.”
Longtime CB1 member Paul Goldstein said, “Paul and I lived as neighbors and raised our families in Southbridge Towers. At a time there were no schools or libraries or youth programs or sport leagues serving Lower Manhattan, and Battery Park City was just getting built, this community was really just a nine-to-five work zone. He quickly became a leader and played a major role in getting new schools built, starting with P.S. 234. His fingerprints are everywhere in Lower Manhattan.”
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In addition to helping build new schools in the community (among them P.S. 234, P.S. 89, I.S. 289, P.S. 276, the Spruce Street School, the Peck Slip School, Millennium High School, the Blue School, and the Jewish Learning Experience of Chabad FiDi), Mr. Hovitz – who eventually rose to be elected vice chair of CB1 – became a leading advocate for health benefits to protect Lower Manhattan residents made ill by the environmental hazards associated with the destruction of the World Trade Center. He also served on the advisory board for New York-Presbyterian Lower Manhattan Hospital.
During a December 22 memorial service held at the Jewish Learning Experience of Chabad FiDi, Rabbi Nissi Eber recalled telling Mr. Hovitz shortly after they first met, almost a decade ago, “we’re looking for a place for our Hebrew school in Lower Manhattan.”
“A few days later,” Rabbi Eber continued, “the principal of the Blue School reached out to me and said, ‘we’d like you to come look at this space for your Hebrew School.” Something had happened. That was the beginning of the FiDi Hebrew school, which opened in September 2019. And that was all from just a few phone calls made by Paul. Today, we have classrooms, there’s a kid’s gym. Those seeds were planted by Paul. And for this, we are forever grateful.”
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When not waging political battle on behalf of schools and students, Mr. Hovitz was also a consistent advocate for affordable housing in a rapidly gentrifying community. This position took on a personal edge a decade ago, when he led a quixotic (and ultimately unsuccessful) campaign to prevent the Southbridge Towers apartment complex, where he lived for decades, from withdrawing from the Mitchell-Lama affordability program. Mr. Hovitz opposed the privatization of Southbridge Towers in spite of the fact that the proposed change promised a significant financial windfall for him and other residents. “I just didn’t see how I could agree to any plan that would deny to later generations the same opportunity for a decent home at a reasonable price that I had benefitted from,” he said at the time. In spite of Mr. Hovitz’s opposition, Southbridge withdrew from the Mitchell-Lama program at the close of 2015.
Mr. Hovitz’s community leadership was always especially focused on the South Street Seaport neighborhood, where he was a patron and protector of the South Street Seaport Museum, and joined a broad coalition of residents and elected officials to oppose a 2009 plan by developer General Growth Properties to erect a skyscraper next to Pier 17 on the site of the New Market Building. He later brokered a dialog between the Howard Hughes Corporation (the successor to General Growth Properties in redeveloping the Seaport) that resulted in generous corporate support for local schools and community service organizations such as the Downtown Little League.
In 2016, he was part of a coalition of community leaders who opposed (unsuccessfully) a plan by the administration of Mayor Bill de Blasio to hand over to building owners along Water Street more than 100,000 square feet of arcades and plazas that were created as public amenities, allowing developers to enclose and privatize these spaces by building new retail storefronts. That same year, Mr. Hovitz exposed a local scandal by documenting that paid political consultants, masquerading as opinion-poll researchers, were in reality trying to manipulate Lower Manhattan residents into supporting this plan, by calling them under the pretext of representing City Council member Margaret Chin. When the lobbying team hired to push this proposal initially denied the accusation, Mr. Hovitz provided photographic proof, in the form of a Caller ID screen on his home phone falsely ascribing such a call to Ms. Chin’s office. At that point, the lobbying team reversed itself, admitted that this deception had taken place and apologized, while blaming the subterfuge on a rogue subcontractor.
As he stepped down from CB1 in 2019, Mr. Hovitz observed, “it took a village to get all these things accomplished, and you are the village. It has been a great honor and a privilege for me to work with you. And I love you all.”
Matthew Fenton
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Resonance of Things Past
In Search of a Lost Christmastime
More than half a century ago, in the suburbs east of Manhattan, a former nun and a former soldier, united in a marriage of inconvenience, settled in a large old house that always struck their first-born child as haunted – not in any sinister way, but instead full of wonder and magical possibility: secret rooms aching to be discovered, stories yearning to be told. Read more...
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Letters
Re: Resonance of Things Past, December 20, 2024
To the editor,
Thank you for this Christmas story. It was unexpected. Happy holidays to my favorite newspaper, grateful for all you do.
Cris Green
To the editor,
Please send Matthew Fenton’s column “Resonance of Things Past” to every writing contest you know. It’s so beautifully written. It’s a gracious look back and a tender look forward. May his future grandchild see this someday and know an artist wrote this.
Wendy Chapman
To the editor,
I rely on your extremely informative news articles. I don’t find important local reporting like yours anywhere else in our local papers, so thank you for keeping at it! But this personal essay hit home in a different way, proving your excellence as not just a reporter, but as a writer. I hope that you have a merry holiday.
Patricia Aakre
To the editor,
Thanks to you for keeping our local paper going. So much neighborhood and local history is kept because of The Broadsheet reporting.
Cora Fung
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