The son of Russian immigrants, Mr. Kabacoff showed his competitive streak early on the tennis court. He started playing when he was 12 and kept at it for most of his life, winning the state singles and doubles tennis
championships in his age group the year he turned 70. Mr. Kabacoff used tennis not only for exercise but also for making personal and professional contacts.
In 1931, Mr. Kabacoff and his partner, Bernard Friedman, won the national junior indoor doubles championship. His prowess resulted in a tennis scholarship to the University of Pennsylvania, where Mr. Kabacoff earned undergraduate and law degrees and was the team's co-captain.
He passed the bar examination in 1937 and was hired by the New York firm Garey, Desvernine and Kissam. But when the United States entered World War II, Mr. Kabacoff was impatient to see action, so he volunteered for the Army
and applied for officer training.
A Wall Street lawyer at the outbreak of World War II, Kabacoff volunteered for Army service. The New York native was stationed in New Orleans, where he remained after the war. During the next half-century, he helped launch New Orleans' first television station, WDSU, and, as a real estate developer, built the Royal Orleans Hotel, the New Orleans Hilton and the Riverwalk Shopping Center, all of which revitalized the waterfront area and boosted tourism. He also had a hand in bringing the World's Fair to New Orleans in 1984, and in the development of the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center.
After the war, he became the executive assistant to businessman and philanthropist Edgar Stern; that tie provided access to powerful people with whom Mr. Kabacoff, a strong, driving force since his days on the junior tennis circuit, helped make things happen.
He was a pivotal figure in the development of New Orleans who became known as the Crescent City's father of modern tourism.
In recognition of his contributions to the city, the University of New Orleans named a school in his honor, the Lester E. Kabacoff School of Hotel, Restaurant and Tourism Administration. He served more than three decades on the board of Dillard University, which established a professorship in Kabacoff's name. Among his other accomplishments, he helped establish such civic organizations as the Council for a Better Louisiana, the Public Affairs Research Council, the Police Foundation and the Metropolitan Area Committee.
Kabacoff is survived by his wife, Gloria; a son, Pres; a daughter, Margot K. Peters; a sister, Helen Davis; four grandchildren; and a great-grandchild.
_________________________________________________________________
Lester Kabacoff, 90 of New Orleansis dead at 90
Times-Picayune, The (New Orleans, LA) — Monday, January 26, 2004
CORRECTION APPENDED
Lester Kabacoff, a visionary, public-spirited New Orleans developer whose projects included luxury hotels, subdivisions, the city's first television station and the 1984 world's fair, died Sunday at his New Orleans home. He was 90.
A New York City native who had lived in New Orleans since 1942, Mr. Kabacoff was a Wall Street lawyer who came to the city during World War II and decided to stay. After the war, he became the executive assistant to businessman and philanthropist Edgar Stern; that tie provided access to powerful people with whom Mr. Kabacoff, a strong, driving force since his days on the junior tennis circuit, helped make things happen.
During the next half-century, Mr. Kabacoff assembled teams that built luxury hotels, subdivisions, the 1984 world's fair and the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center. He helped set up WDSU-TV, revitalize the city's flagging tourism industry and establish civic organizations such as the Council for a Better Louisiana, the Public Affairs Research Council, the Police Foundation, the Metropolitan Area Committee and the agency now known as the New Orleans Metropolitan Convention and Visitors Bureau. Through projects such as the New Orleans Hilton and the fair, Mr. Kabacoff helped New Orleanians rediscover the Mississippi River.
"I think he's been able to get things done that made other people throw up their hands and say, 'It can't be done,' " said restaurateur Ella Brennan, a longtime friend. "When he saw something that could be done, he couldn't stand it if he couldn't make it happen."
Mr. Kabacoff's feats earned him an array of tributes. A plaza and a professorship at Dillard University, a restaurant at the Hilton and a division of the University of New Orleans bear his name, and the awards he received include the Mayor's Medal of Honor and The Times-Picayune Loving Cup.
Despite the plaudits, Mr. Kabacoff remained steadfastly humble about his deeds.
"I'm a sort of putter-together fellow," he said in an interview. "I do not quit. If I think something's worthwhile doing, I do it."
Early competitive streak
The son of Russian immigrants, Mr. Kabacoff showed his competitive streak early on the tennis court. He started playing when he was 12 and kept at it for most of his life, winning the state singles and doubles tennis championships in his age group the year he turned 70. Mr. Kabacoff used tennis not only for exercise but also for making personal and professional contacts.
In 1931, Mr. Kabacoff and his partner, Bernard Friedman, won the national junior indoor doubles championship. His prowess resulted in a tennis scholarship to the University of Pennsylvania, where Mr. Kabacoff earned undergraduate and law degrees and was the team's co-captain.
He passed the bar examination in 1937 and was hired by the New York firm Garey, Desvernine and Kissam. But when the United States entered World War II, Mr. Kabacoff was impatient to see action, so he volunteered for the Army and applied for officer training.
In 1942, he was sent to New Orleans' Port of Embarkation as a labor-relations officer. His assignment was to keep the port open so munitions and supplies could get to Europe, a tricky task that meant negotiating with often-contentious black and white longshoremen's unions, said Pres Kabacoff, Mr. Kabacoff's son.
Because of his success in labor relations, Mr. Kabacoff was sent to solve disputes throughout the Gulf Coast area. "If they had a labor problem anywhere in the New Orleans area, they'd ask me to handle it," he said in a privately published memoir.
Tennis at Longue Vue
While on duty in New Orleans, things began to happen in the young officer's personal life.
In 1943, he received an invitation from Lt. William Ewing "Slew" Hester, a fellow tennis buff who later was president of the U.S. Tennis Association, to play at what was described as "the nicest tennis court in New Orleans." It was at Longue Vue, the suburban estate that was home to Edgar and Edith Stern, philanthropists and activists who championed a host of civic, social, cultural and educational causes.
The four became friends and regular tennis partners, forming a group they called the Longue Vue Racquet and Julep Club. Because the Army didn't provide housing for the officers and because the Sterns' children were away, they invited Hester and Mr. Kabacoff to move in.
A year after Mr. Kabacoff had decamped to Longue Vue, he caught a ride to work one morning with his commanding general. Also in the car was Gloria Simmons, the general's secretary. That chance meeting launched a courtship that culminated in an August wedding performed by an Army chaplain at Longue Vue.
The newlyweds honeymooned in New York City. Because Gloria Kabacoff was Catholic and because members of her new spouse's law firm there had social and religious contacts, the couple had another ceremony -- in St. Patrick's Cathedral, with Cardinal Francis Spellman officiating. The Sterns gave a party for them on the roof of the St. Regis Hotel.
Decides to stay
In May 1945, Mr. Kabacoff was admitted to the Louisiana bar. When the war ended, Mr. Kabacoff told his senior partner in New York he had decided to make New Orleans his home. Within a year, Edgar Stern asked Mr. Kabacoff to be his executive assistant and attorney.
"It took me about three seconds to make up my mind and say yes," Mr. Kabacoff said in an interview.
It was a loosely defined job in which Mr. Kabacoff was assigned to see to Edgar Stern's pet projects, becoming not only his protégé but also his alter ego.
"He had gotten tired of going to all these meetings," Mr. Kabacoff said. "My job was to do everything Edgar Stern didn't want to do anymore."
As a result, Stern's causes became Mr. Kabacoff's, among them Dillard University. "He took the torch from Mr. Stern in terms of service at Dillard," Dillard President Michael Lomax said.
Like Stern, Mr. Kabacoff served on the board of trustees, and the Kabacoffs gave generously -- more than $600,000, according to Dillard records. The Gloria and Lester E. Kabacoff Professorship in Business Administration was established in 1996, and Kabacoff Quadrangle has been named in his honor on the Gentilly campus.
In 1998, when Mr. Kabacoff retired after 28 years on the board, including service as treasurer and chairman of the committee on finance and development, he was named a trustee emeritus.
Civic group founder
Working with the Sterns, Mr. Kabacoff helped set up WDSU in 1948 and develop Pontchartrain Park, a Gentilly suburb designed in the early 1950s to give black people a chance to own their own homes.
"It was not built as a segregated community," Mr. Kabacoff said. "It was built to fill a need, and for $14,000 you could buy the best house in Pontchartrain Park."
Mr. Kabacoff also was a founder of civic groups such as the Council for a Better Louisiana, the Public Affairs Research Council and the Metropolitan Area Committee.
But he was also a canny businessman. "He had a lot of drive, and once he set his sights on something, I think he pursued it with a great deal of determination," said Charles A. Ferguson, former editor of The Times-Picayune, a longtime friend of Mr. Kabacoff's and president of Dillard's board of trustees.
In the late 1950s, Mr. Kabacoff masterminded the deal that resulted in the Royal Orleans Hotel (now the Omni Royal Orleans Hotel), the city's first major new hotel in 42 years. These Kabacoff projects followed: the Royal Sonesta, the Dauphine Orleans, Beau Chene subdivision and the New Orleans Hilton, where a restaurant, Kabby's, bears his nickname. The Hilton is part of a riverfront complex that includes the Riverwalk marketplace and One River Place, the luxury high-rise that has been the Kabacoffs' home.
Vision for riverfront
The notion of developing New Orleans' riverfront, an area that had been dominated for decades by warehouses and wharves, seemed logical, Mr. Kabacoff said.
"I've been to Paris; I've been to London," he said. "The nicest places to live in many cities of the world are on the river. We've got this river, with 17 miles of wharves, and 98 percent of the people of New Orleans, until the Moonwalk was built, had never seen the river."
To draw more attention to the riverfront and the adjoining, ignored Warehouse District, Mr. Kabacoff was an early backer of the 1984 world's fair, a splashy venture that delighted visitors but turned into a financial disaster for its investors.
That setback "put him into a funk," Pres Kabacoff said. "He was just sick about the fact that people were hurt. I think that was, perhaps, the most difficult period for him."
But the exposition did have a good long-term effect, Pres Kabacoff said, because it made people aware of the Warehouse District's potential as a site for homes, restaurants, galleries, hotels and offices, resulting in one of the country's major examples of urban revitalization.
Father of tourism
And the fair's Great Hall, which had housed the Louisiana Pavilion and many smaller exhibits, became the nucleus of the building Mr. Kabacoff had long said the city needed: a convention hall big enough to land meetings that were bypassing New Orleans because nothing in the city could house them.
The center, now known as the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center, has been enlarged several times since, expanding beneath and beyond the Crescent City Connection with more growth scheduled. It is the most visible outgrowth of Mr. Kabacoff's determination, born in the early 1970s, to strengthen efforts to attract business and pleasure travelers to the area.
University of New Orleans Chancellor Tim Ryan has called Mr. Kabacoff the father of modern tourism. As a result of Mr. Kabacoff's work and his gifts to UNO, the university's School of Hotel, Restaurant and Tourism Administration was named for him in 1998.
The seed for one of Mr. Kabacoff's last initiatives was planted one night in the mid-1990s. As he and his wife were leaving a Garden District party, their host told them to wait until a private guard could walk them to their car. That made Mr. Kabacoff think about trying to improve law enforcement; the result was the New Orleans Police Foundation, a private organization that strengthens the Police Department by finding money for continuing education, better equipment and support for community policing.
"He not only led the way with his ideas and his compassion, but also with his personal contributions to making it go," said Terry Ebbert, the foundation's former director, who is executive assistant to Mayor Ray Nagin for homeland security and public safety.
Social conscience praised
In summing up Mr. Kabacoff's achievements, former Mayor Moon Landrieu praised his business skills and his social conscience: "Very few people that I know of have contributed more to this city than Lester Kabacoff, not only in terms of physical developments that he initiated and completed but also in terms of his contribution to the improvement of the government and many of the private institutions that make the city what it is."
Mr. Kabacoff was a former president of Metairie Park Country Day School's board of trustees and a former board member of the Boy Scouts of America's New Orleans Council, the United Negro College Fund and the Urban League of New Orleans. He was co-chairman of the task force that helped land the 1972 Super Bowl for New Orleans.
"The city's been good to me," Mr. Kabacoff said. "I wanted to give something back to the city. I've felt that way, ever since I've done all the things I've done."
Survivors include his wife, Gloria Simmons Kabacoff; a son, Pres Kabacoff; a daughter, Margot K. Peters of Austin, Texas; a sister, Helen Davis of South Orange, N.J.; four grandchildren; and a great-grandchild.
The funeral and burial will be private.
A gathering celebrating Mr. Kabacoff's life will be held Wednesday at 11:30 a.m. in the Mark Twain Courtyard of the New Orleans Hilton. The event will be moved indoors in case of inclement weather.
CORRECTION / CLARIFICATION
Kabacoff daughter's name corrected: The late Lester Kabacoff's daughter is Margot K. Thomas of Austin, Texas. Her name was incorrect in Monday's obituary. (1/27/2004)
---------------------------------------------------
Lester Kabacoff: New Orleans mover, shaker dies
Advocate, The (Baton Rouge, LA) - Tuesday, January 27, 2004
NEW ORLEANS - Lester Kabacoff, who helped develop New Orleans' first television station in 1948 and the World's Fair in 1984, is dead at the age of 90.
He died Sunday.
Kabacoff, born in New York City, was a Wall Street lawyer when he came to New Orleans during World War II and decided to stay.
After the war he became executive assistant to businessman and philanthropist Edgar Stern. During the next half-century, Kabacoff was involved in launching television station WDSU and in the building of hotels, subdivisions, and the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center.
He helped establish civic organizations such as the Council for a Better Louisiana, Public Affairs Research Council, Police Foundation, Metropolitan Area Committee and New Orleans convention bureau.
"Very few people that I know of have contributed more to this city than Lester Kabacoff, not only in terms of physical developments that he initiated and completed but also in terms of his contribution to the improvement of the government and many of the private institutions that make the city what it is," former Mayor Moon Landrieu said.
Restaurateur and longtime friend Ella Brennan said, "I think he's been able to get things done that made other people throw up their hands and say, 'It can't be done.' "When he saw something that could be done, he couldn't stand it if he couldn't make it happen."A plaza and a professorship at Dillard University, a restaurant, and a division of the University of New Orleans all were named for Kabacoff.
"I'm a sort of putter-together fellow," he once told The Times-Picayune. "I do not quit. If I think something's worthwhile doing, I do it."
The son of Russian immigrants, Kabacoff began playing tennis at 12 and won a scholarship to the University of Pennsylvania, where he was team co-captain and earned his undergraduate and law degrees.
A lawyer when the United States entered World War II, Kabacoff volunteered for the Army and applied for officer training.
In 1942, he was sent to New Orleans' Port of Embarkation as a labor-relations officer. His assignment was to keep the port open so munitions and supplies could get to Europe, a tricky task that meant negotiating with often-contentious longshoremen's unions, said Pres Kabacoff, Kabacoff's son.
Survivors include his wife, Gloria Simmons Kabacoff; a son, Pres Kabacoff; a daughter, Margot K. Peters of Austin, Texas; a sister, Helen Davis of South Orange, N.J.; four grandchildren; and a great-grandchild.
The funeral and burial will be private. A gathering celebrating Kabacoff's life will be held Wednesday at the New Orleans Hilton.
championships in his age group the year he turned 70. Mr. Kabacoff used tennis not only for exercise but also for making personal and professional contacts.
In 1931, Mr. Kabacoff and his partner, Bernard Friedman, won the national junior indoor doubles championship. His prowess resulted in a tennis scholarship to the University of Pennsylvania, where Mr. Kabacoff earned undergraduate and law degrees and was the team's co-captain.
He passed the bar examination in 1937 and was hired by the New York firm Garey, Desvernine and Kissam. But when the United States entered World War II, Mr. Kabacoff was impatient to see action, so he volunteered for the Army
and applied for officer training.
A Wall Street lawyer at the outbreak of World War II, Kabacoff volunteered for Army service. The New York native was stationed in New Orleans, where he remained after the war. During the next half-century, he helped launch New Orleans' first television station, WDSU, and, as a real estate developer, built the Royal Orleans Hotel, the New Orleans Hilton and the Riverwalk Shopping Center, all of which revitalized the waterfront area and boosted tourism. He also had a hand in bringing the World's Fair to New Orleans in 1984, and in the development of the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center.
After the war, he became the executive assistant to businessman and philanthropist Edgar Stern; that tie provided access to powerful people with whom Mr. Kabacoff, a strong, driving force since his days on the junior tennis circuit, helped make things happen.
He was a pivotal figure in the development of New Orleans who became known as the Crescent City's father of modern tourism.
In recognition of his contributions to the city, the University of New Orleans named a school in his honor, the Lester E. Kabacoff School of Hotel, Restaurant and Tourism Administration. He served more than three decades on the board of Dillard University, which established a professorship in Kabacoff's name. Among his other accomplishments, he helped establish such civic organizations as the Council for a Better Louisiana, the Public Affairs Research Council, the Police Foundation and the Metropolitan Area Committee.
Kabacoff is survived by his wife, Gloria; a son, Pres; a daughter, Margot K. Peters; a sister, Helen Davis; four grandchildren; and a great-grandchild.
_________________________________________________________________
Lester Kabacoff, 90 of New Orleansis dead at 90
Times-Picayune, The (New Orleans, LA) — Monday, January 26, 2004
CORRECTION APPENDED
Lester Kabacoff, a visionary, public-spirited New Orleans developer whose projects included luxury hotels, subdivisions, the city's first television station and the 1984 world's fair, died Sunday at his New Orleans home. He was 90.
A New York City native who had lived in New Orleans since 1942, Mr. Kabacoff was a Wall Street lawyer who came to the city during World War II and decided to stay. After the war, he became the executive assistant to businessman and philanthropist Edgar Stern; that tie provided access to powerful people with whom Mr. Kabacoff, a strong, driving force since his days on the junior tennis circuit, helped make things happen.
During the next half-century, Mr. Kabacoff assembled teams that built luxury hotels, subdivisions, the 1984 world's fair and the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center. He helped set up WDSU-TV, revitalize the city's flagging tourism industry and establish civic organizations such as the Council for a Better Louisiana, the Public Affairs Research Council, the Police Foundation, the Metropolitan Area Committee and the agency now known as the New Orleans Metropolitan Convention and Visitors Bureau. Through projects such as the New Orleans Hilton and the fair, Mr. Kabacoff helped New Orleanians rediscover the Mississippi River.
"I think he's been able to get things done that made other people throw up their hands and say, 'It can't be done,' " said restaurateur Ella Brennan, a longtime friend. "When he saw something that could be done, he couldn't stand it if he couldn't make it happen."
Mr. Kabacoff's feats earned him an array of tributes. A plaza and a professorship at Dillard University, a restaurant at the Hilton and a division of the University of New Orleans bear his name, and the awards he received include the Mayor's Medal of Honor and The Times-Picayune Loving Cup.
Despite the plaudits, Mr. Kabacoff remained steadfastly humble about his deeds.
"I'm a sort of putter-together fellow," he said in an interview. "I do not quit. If I think something's worthwhile doing, I do it."
Early competitive streak
The son of Russian immigrants, Mr. Kabacoff showed his competitive streak early on the tennis court. He started playing when he was 12 and kept at it for most of his life, winning the state singles and doubles tennis championships in his age group the year he turned 70. Mr. Kabacoff used tennis not only for exercise but also for making personal and professional contacts.
In 1931, Mr. Kabacoff and his partner, Bernard Friedman, won the national junior indoor doubles championship. His prowess resulted in a tennis scholarship to the University of Pennsylvania, where Mr. Kabacoff earned undergraduate and law degrees and was the team's co-captain.
He passed the bar examination in 1937 and was hired by the New York firm Garey, Desvernine and Kissam. But when the United States entered World War II, Mr. Kabacoff was impatient to see action, so he volunteered for the Army and applied for officer training.
In 1942, he was sent to New Orleans' Port of Embarkation as a labor-relations officer. His assignment was to keep the port open so munitions and supplies could get to Europe, a tricky task that meant negotiating with often-contentious black and white longshoremen's unions, said Pres Kabacoff, Mr. Kabacoff's son.
Because of his success in labor relations, Mr. Kabacoff was sent to solve disputes throughout the Gulf Coast area. "If they had a labor problem anywhere in the New Orleans area, they'd ask me to handle it," he said in a privately published memoir.
Tennis at Longue Vue
While on duty in New Orleans, things began to happen in the young officer's personal life.
In 1943, he received an invitation from Lt. William Ewing "Slew" Hester, a fellow tennis buff who later was president of the U.S. Tennis Association, to play at what was described as "the nicest tennis court in New Orleans." It was at Longue Vue, the suburban estate that was home to Edgar and Edith Stern, philanthropists and activists who championed a host of civic, social, cultural and educational causes.
The four became friends and regular tennis partners, forming a group they called the Longue Vue Racquet and Julep Club. Because the Army didn't provide housing for the officers and because the Sterns' children were away, they invited Hester and Mr. Kabacoff to move in.
A year after Mr. Kabacoff had decamped to Longue Vue, he caught a ride to work one morning with his commanding general. Also in the car was Gloria Simmons, the general's secretary. That chance meeting launched a courtship that culminated in an August wedding performed by an Army chaplain at Longue Vue.
The newlyweds honeymooned in New York City. Because Gloria Kabacoff was Catholic and because members of her new spouse's law firm there had social and religious contacts, the couple had another ceremony -- in St. Patrick's Cathedral, with Cardinal Francis Spellman officiating. The Sterns gave a party for them on the roof of the St. Regis Hotel.
Decides to stay
In May 1945, Mr. Kabacoff was admitted to the Louisiana bar. When the war ended, Mr. Kabacoff told his senior partner in New York he had decided to make New Orleans his home. Within a year, Edgar Stern asked Mr. Kabacoff to be his executive assistant and attorney.
"It took me about three seconds to make up my mind and say yes," Mr. Kabacoff said in an interview.
It was a loosely defined job in which Mr. Kabacoff was assigned to see to Edgar Stern's pet projects, becoming not only his protégé but also his alter ego.
"He had gotten tired of going to all these meetings," Mr. Kabacoff said. "My job was to do everything Edgar Stern didn't want to do anymore."
As a result, Stern's causes became Mr. Kabacoff's, among them Dillard University. "He took the torch from Mr. Stern in terms of service at Dillard," Dillard President Michael Lomax said.
Like Stern, Mr. Kabacoff served on the board of trustees, and the Kabacoffs gave generously -- more than $600,000, according to Dillard records. The Gloria and Lester E. Kabacoff Professorship in Business Administration was established in 1996, and Kabacoff Quadrangle has been named in his honor on the Gentilly campus.
In 1998, when Mr. Kabacoff retired after 28 years on the board, including service as treasurer and chairman of the committee on finance and development, he was named a trustee emeritus.
Civic group founder
Working with the Sterns, Mr. Kabacoff helped set up WDSU in 1948 and develop Pontchartrain Park, a Gentilly suburb designed in the early 1950s to give black people a chance to own their own homes.
"It was not built as a segregated community," Mr. Kabacoff said. "It was built to fill a need, and for $14,000 you could buy the best house in Pontchartrain Park."
Mr. Kabacoff also was a founder of civic groups such as the Council for a Better Louisiana, the Public Affairs Research Council and the Metropolitan Area Committee.
But he was also a canny businessman. "He had a lot of drive, and once he set his sights on something, I think he pursued it with a great deal of determination," said Charles A. Ferguson, former editor of The Times-Picayune, a longtime friend of Mr. Kabacoff's and president of Dillard's board of trustees.
In the late 1950s, Mr. Kabacoff masterminded the deal that resulted in the Royal Orleans Hotel (now the Omni Royal Orleans Hotel), the city's first major new hotel in 42 years. These Kabacoff projects followed: the Royal Sonesta, the Dauphine Orleans, Beau Chene subdivision and the New Orleans Hilton, where a restaurant, Kabby's, bears his nickname. The Hilton is part of a riverfront complex that includes the Riverwalk marketplace and One River Place, the luxury high-rise that has been the Kabacoffs' home.
Vision for riverfront
The notion of developing New Orleans' riverfront, an area that had been dominated for decades by warehouses and wharves, seemed logical, Mr. Kabacoff said.
"I've been to Paris; I've been to London," he said. "The nicest places to live in many cities of the world are on the river. We've got this river, with 17 miles of wharves, and 98 percent of the people of New Orleans, until the Moonwalk was built, had never seen the river."
To draw more attention to the riverfront and the adjoining, ignored Warehouse District, Mr. Kabacoff was an early backer of the 1984 world's fair, a splashy venture that delighted visitors but turned into a financial disaster for its investors.
That setback "put him into a funk," Pres Kabacoff said. "He was just sick about the fact that people were hurt. I think that was, perhaps, the most difficult period for him."
But the exposition did have a good long-term effect, Pres Kabacoff said, because it made people aware of the Warehouse District's potential as a site for homes, restaurants, galleries, hotels and offices, resulting in one of the country's major examples of urban revitalization.
Father of tourism
And the fair's Great Hall, which had housed the Louisiana Pavilion and many smaller exhibits, became the nucleus of the building Mr. Kabacoff had long said the city needed: a convention hall big enough to land meetings that were bypassing New Orleans because nothing in the city could house them.
The center, now known as the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center, has been enlarged several times since, expanding beneath and beyond the Crescent City Connection with more growth scheduled. It is the most visible outgrowth of Mr. Kabacoff's determination, born in the early 1970s, to strengthen efforts to attract business and pleasure travelers to the area.
University of New Orleans Chancellor Tim Ryan has called Mr. Kabacoff the father of modern tourism. As a result of Mr. Kabacoff's work and his gifts to UNO, the university's School of Hotel, Restaurant and Tourism Administration was named for him in 1998.
The seed for one of Mr. Kabacoff's last initiatives was planted one night in the mid-1990s. As he and his wife were leaving a Garden District party, their host told them to wait until a private guard could walk them to their car. That made Mr. Kabacoff think about trying to improve law enforcement; the result was the New Orleans Police Foundation, a private organization that strengthens the Police Department by finding money for continuing education, better equipment and support for community policing.
"He not only led the way with his ideas and his compassion, but also with his personal contributions to making it go," said Terry Ebbert, the foundation's former director, who is executive assistant to Mayor Ray Nagin for homeland security and public safety.
Social conscience praised
In summing up Mr. Kabacoff's achievements, former Mayor Moon Landrieu praised his business skills and his social conscience: "Very few people that I know of have contributed more to this city than Lester Kabacoff, not only in terms of physical developments that he initiated and completed but also in terms of his contribution to the improvement of the government and many of the private institutions that make the city what it is."
Mr. Kabacoff was a former president of Metairie Park Country Day School's board of trustees and a former board member of the Boy Scouts of America's New Orleans Council, the United Negro College Fund and the Urban League of New Orleans. He was co-chairman of the task force that helped land the 1972 Super Bowl for New Orleans.
"The city's been good to me," Mr. Kabacoff said. "I wanted to give something back to the city. I've felt that way, ever since I've done all the things I've done."
Survivors include his wife, Gloria Simmons Kabacoff; a son, Pres Kabacoff; a daughter, Margot K. Peters of Austin, Texas; a sister, Helen Davis of South Orange, N.J.; four grandchildren; and a great-grandchild.
The funeral and burial will be private.
A gathering celebrating Mr. Kabacoff's life will be held Wednesday at 11:30 a.m. in the Mark Twain Courtyard of the New Orleans Hilton. The event will be moved indoors in case of inclement weather.
CORRECTION / CLARIFICATION
Kabacoff daughter's name corrected: The late Lester Kabacoff's daughter is Margot K. Thomas of Austin, Texas. Her name was incorrect in Monday's obituary. (1/27/2004)
---------------------------------------------------
Lester Kabacoff: New Orleans mover, shaker dies
Advocate, The (Baton Rouge, LA) - Tuesday, January 27, 2004
NEW ORLEANS - Lester Kabacoff, who helped develop New Orleans' first television station in 1948 and the World's Fair in 1984, is dead at the age of 90.
He died Sunday.
Kabacoff, born in New York City, was a Wall Street lawyer when he came to New Orleans during World War II and decided to stay.
After the war he became executive assistant to businessman and philanthropist Edgar Stern. During the next half-century, Kabacoff was involved in launching television station WDSU and in the building of hotels, subdivisions, and the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center.
He helped establish civic organizations such as the Council for a Better Louisiana, Public Affairs Research Council, Police Foundation, Metropolitan Area Committee and New Orleans convention bureau.
"Very few people that I know of have contributed more to this city than Lester Kabacoff, not only in terms of physical developments that he initiated and completed but also in terms of his contribution to the improvement of the government and many of the private institutions that make the city what it is," former Mayor Moon Landrieu said.
Restaurateur and longtime friend Ella Brennan said, "I think he's been able to get things done that made other people throw up their hands and say, 'It can't be done.' "When he saw something that could be done, he couldn't stand it if he couldn't make it happen."A plaza and a professorship at Dillard University, a restaurant, and a division of the University of New Orleans all were named for Kabacoff.
"I'm a sort of putter-together fellow," he once told The Times-Picayune. "I do not quit. If I think something's worthwhile doing, I do it."
The son of Russian immigrants, Kabacoff began playing tennis at 12 and won a scholarship to the University of Pennsylvania, where he was team co-captain and earned his undergraduate and law degrees.
A lawyer when the United States entered World War II, Kabacoff volunteered for the Army and applied for officer training.
In 1942, he was sent to New Orleans' Port of Embarkation as a labor-relations officer. His assignment was to keep the port open so munitions and supplies could get to Europe, a tricky task that meant negotiating with often-contentious longshoremen's unions, said Pres Kabacoff, Kabacoff's son.
Survivors include his wife, Gloria Simmons Kabacoff; a son, Pres Kabacoff; a daughter, Margot K. Peters of Austin, Texas; a sister, Helen Davis of South Orange, N.J.; four grandchildren; and a great-grandchild.
The funeral and burial will be private. A gathering celebrating Kabacoff's life will be held Wednesday at the New Orleans Hilton.
The son of Russian immigrants, Mr. Kabacoff showed his competitive streak early on the tennis court. He started playing when he was 12 and kept at it for most of his life, winning the state singles and doubles tennis
championships in his age group the year he turned 70. Mr. Kabacoff used tennis not only for exercise but also for making personal and professional contacts.
In 1931, Mr. Kabacoff and his partner, Bernard Friedman, won the national junior indoor doubles championship. His prowess resulted in a tennis scholarship to the University of Pennsylvania, where Mr. Kabacoff earned undergraduate and law degrees and was the team's co-captain.
He passed the bar examination in 1937 and was hired by the New York firm Garey, Desvernine and Kissam. But when the United States entered World War II, Mr. Kabacoff was impatient to see action, so he volunteered for the Army
and applied for officer training.
A Wall Street lawyer at the outbreak of World War II, Kabacoff volunteered for Army service. The New York native was stationed in New Orleans, where he remained after the war. During the next half-century, he helped launch New Orleans' first television station, WDSU, and, as a real estate developer, built the Royal Orleans Hotel, the New Orleans Hilton and the Riverwalk Shopping Center, all of which revitalized the waterfront area and boosted tourism. He also had a hand in bringing the World's Fair to New Orleans in 1984, and in the development of the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center.
After the war, he became the executive assistant to businessman and philanthropist Edgar Stern; that tie provided access to powerful people with whom Mr. Kabacoff, a strong, driving force since his days on the junior tennis circuit, helped make things happen.
He was a pivotal figure in the development of New Orleans who became known as the Crescent City's father of modern tourism.
In recognition of his contributions to the city, the University of New Orleans named a school in his honor, the Lester E. Kabacoff School of Hotel, Restaurant and Tourism Administration. He served more than three decades on the board of Dillard University, which established a professorship in Kabacoff's name. Among his other accomplishments, he helped establish such civic organizations as the Council for a Better Louisiana, the Public Affairs Research Council, the Police Foundation and the Metropolitan Area Committee.
Kabacoff is survived by his wife, Gloria; a son, Pres; a daughter, Margot K. Peters; a sister, Helen Davis; four grandchildren; and a great-grandchild.
_________________________________________________________________
Lester Kabacoff, 90 of New Orleansis dead at 90
Times-Picayune, The (New Orleans, LA) — Monday, January 26, 2004
CORRECTION APPENDED
Lester Kabacoff, a visionary, public-spirited New Orleans developer whose projects included luxury hotels, subdivisions, the city's first television station and the 1984 world's fair, died Sunday at his New Orleans home. He was 90.
A New York City native who had lived in New Orleans since 1942, Mr. Kabacoff was a Wall Street lawyer who came to the city during World War II and decided to stay. After the war, he became the executive assistant to businessman and philanthropist Edgar Stern; that tie provided access to powerful people with whom Mr. Kabacoff, a strong, driving force since his days on the junior tennis circuit, helped make things happen.
During the next half-century, Mr. Kabacoff assembled teams that built luxury hotels, subdivisions, the 1984 world's fair and the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center. He helped set up WDSU-TV, revitalize the city's flagging tourism industry and establish civic organizations such as the Council for a Better Louisiana, the Public Affairs Research Council, the Police Foundation, the Metropolitan Area Committee and the agency now known as the New Orleans Metropolitan Convention and Visitors Bureau. Through projects such as the New Orleans Hilton and the fair, Mr. Kabacoff helped New Orleanians rediscover the Mississippi River.
"I think he's been able to get things done that made other people throw up their hands and say, 'It can't be done,' " said restaurateur Ella Brennan, a longtime friend. "When he saw something that could be done, he couldn't stand it if he couldn't make it happen."
Mr. Kabacoff's feats earned him an array of tributes. A plaza and a professorship at Dillard University, a restaurant at the Hilton and a division of the University of New Orleans bear his name, and the awards he received include the Mayor's Medal of Honor and The Times-Picayune Loving Cup.
Despite the plaudits, Mr. Kabacoff remained steadfastly humble about his deeds.
"I'm a sort of putter-together fellow," he said in an interview. "I do not quit. If I think something's worthwhile doing, I do it."
Early competitive streak
The son of Russian immigrants, Mr. Kabacoff showed his competitive streak early on the tennis court. He started playing when he was 12 and kept at it for most of his life, winning the state singles and doubles tennis championships in his age group the year he turned 70. Mr. Kabacoff used tennis not only for exercise but also for making personal and professional contacts.
In 1931, Mr. Kabacoff and his partner, Bernard Friedman, won the national junior indoor doubles championship. His prowess resulted in a tennis scholarship to the University of Pennsylvania, where Mr. Kabacoff earned undergraduate and law degrees and was the team's co-captain.
He passed the bar examination in 1937 and was hired by the New York firm Garey, Desvernine and Kissam. But when the United States entered World War II, Mr. Kabacoff was impatient to see action, so he volunteered for the Army and applied for officer training.
In 1942, he was sent to New Orleans' Port of Embarkation as a labor-relations officer. His assignment was to keep the port open so munitions and supplies could get to Europe, a tricky task that meant negotiating with often-contentious black and white longshoremen's unions, said Pres Kabacoff, Mr. Kabacoff's son.
Because of his success in labor relations, Mr. Kabacoff was sent to solve disputes throughout the Gulf Coast area. "If they had a labor problem anywhere in the New Orleans area, they'd ask me to handle it," he said in a privately published memoir.
Tennis at Longue Vue
While on duty in New Orleans, things began to happen in the young officer's personal life.
In 1943, he received an invitation from Lt. William Ewing "Slew" Hester, a fellow tennis buff who later was president of the U.S. Tennis Association, to play at what was described as "the nicest tennis court in New Orleans." It was at Longue Vue, the suburban estate that was home to Edgar and Edith Stern, philanthropists and activists who championed a host of civic, social, cultural and educational causes.
The four became friends and regular tennis partners, forming a group they called the Longue Vue Racquet and Julep Club. Because the Army didn't provide housing for the officers and because the Sterns' children were away, they invited Hester and Mr. Kabacoff to move in.
A year after Mr. Kabacoff had decamped to Longue Vue, he caught a ride to work one morning with his commanding general. Also in the car was Gloria Simmons, the general's secretary. That chance meeting launched a courtship that culminated in an August wedding performed by an Army chaplain at Longue Vue.
The newlyweds honeymooned in New York City. Because Gloria Kabacoff was Catholic and because members of her new spouse's law firm there had social and religious contacts, the couple had another ceremony -- in St. Patrick's Cathedral, with Cardinal Francis Spellman officiating. The Sterns gave a party for them on the roof of the St. Regis Hotel.
Decides to stay
In May 1945, Mr. Kabacoff was admitted to the Louisiana bar. When the war ended, Mr. Kabacoff told his senior partner in New York he had decided to make New Orleans his home. Within a year, Edgar Stern asked Mr. Kabacoff to be his executive assistant and attorney.
"It took me about three seconds to make up my mind and say yes," Mr. Kabacoff said in an interview.
It was a loosely defined job in which Mr. Kabacoff was assigned to see to Edgar Stern's pet projects, becoming not only his protégé but also his alter ego.
"He had gotten tired of going to all these meetings," Mr. Kabacoff said. "My job was to do everything Edgar Stern didn't want to do anymore."
As a result, Stern's causes became Mr. Kabacoff's, among them Dillard University. "He took the torch from Mr. Stern in terms of service at Dillard," Dillard President Michael Lomax said.
Like Stern, Mr. Kabacoff served on the board of trustees, and the Kabacoffs gave generously -- more than $600,000, according to Dillard records. The Gloria and Lester E. Kabacoff Professorship in Business Administration was established in 1996, and Kabacoff Quadrangle has been named in his honor on the Gentilly campus.
In 1998, when Mr. Kabacoff retired after 28 years on the board, including service as treasurer and chairman of the committee on finance and development, he was named a trustee emeritus.
Civic group founder
Working with the Sterns, Mr. Kabacoff helped set up WDSU in 1948 and develop Pontchartrain Park, a Gentilly suburb designed in the early 1950s to give black people a chance to own their own homes.
"It was not built as a segregated community," Mr. Kabacoff said. "It was built to fill a need, and for $14,000 you could buy the best house in Pontchartrain Park."
Mr. Kabacoff also was a founder of civic groups such as the Council for a Better Louisiana, the Public Affairs Research Council and the Metropolitan Area Committee.
But he was also a canny businessman. "He had a lot of drive, and once he set his sights on something, I think he pursued it with a great deal of determination," said Charles A. Ferguson, former editor of The Times-Picayune, a longtime friend of Mr. Kabacoff's and president of Dillard's board of trustees.
In the late 1950s, Mr. Kabacoff masterminded the deal that resulted in the Royal Orleans Hotel (now the Omni Royal Orleans Hotel), the city's first major new hotel in 42 years. These Kabacoff projects followed: the Royal Sonesta, the Dauphine Orleans, Beau Chene subdivision and the New Orleans Hilton, where a restaurant, Kabby's, bears his nickname. The Hilton is part of a riverfront complex that includes the Riverwalk marketplace and One River Place, the luxury high-rise that has been the Kabacoffs' home.
Vision for riverfront
The notion of developing New Orleans' riverfront, an area that had been dominated for decades by warehouses and wharves, seemed logical, Mr. Kabacoff said.
"I've been to Paris; I've been to London," he said. "The nicest places to live in many cities of the world are on the river. We've got this river, with 17 miles of wharves, and 98 percent of the people of New Orleans, until the Moonwalk was built, had never seen the river."
To draw more attention to the riverfront and the adjoining, ignored Warehouse District, Mr. Kabacoff was an early backer of the 1984 world's fair, a splashy venture that delighted visitors but turned into a financial disaster for its investors.
That setback "put him into a funk," Pres Kabacoff said. "He was just sick about the fact that people were hurt. I think that was, perhaps, the most difficult period for him."
But the exposition did have a good long-term effect, Pres Kabacoff said, because it made people aware of the Warehouse District's potential as a site for homes, restaurants, galleries, hotels and offices, resulting in one of the country's major examples of urban revitalization.
Father of tourism
And the fair's Great Hall, which had housed the Louisiana Pavilion and many smaller exhibits, became the nucleus of the building Mr. Kabacoff had long said the city needed: a convention hall big enough to land meetings that were bypassing New Orleans because nothing in the city could house them.
The center, now known as the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center, has been enlarged several times since, expanding beneath and beyond the Crescent City Connection with more growth scheduled. It is the most visible outgrowth of Mr. Kabacoff's determination, born in the early 1970s, to strengthen efforts to attract business and pleasure travelers to the area.
University of New Orleans Chancellor Tim Ryan has called Mr. Kabacoff the father of modern tourism. As a result of Mr. Kabacoff's work and his gifts to UNO, the university's School of Hotel, Restaurant and Tourism Administration was named for him in 1998.
The seed for one of Mr. Kabacoff's last initiatives was planted one night in the mid-1990s. As he and his wife were leaving a Garden District party, their host told them to wait until a private guard could walk them to their car. That made Mr. Kabacoff think about trying to improve law enforcement; the result was the New Orleans Police Foundation, a private organization that strengthens the Police Department by finding money for continuing education, better equipment and support for community policing.
"He not only led the way with his ideas and his compassion, but also with his personal contributions to making it go," said Terry Ebbert, the foundation's former director, who is executive assistant to Mayor Ray Nagin for homeland security and public safety.
Social conscience praised
In summing up Mr. Kabacoff's achievements, former Mayor Moon Landrieu praised his business skills and his social conscience: "Very few people that I know of have contributed more to this city than Lester Kabacoff, not only in terms of physical developments that he initiated and completed but also in terms of his contribution to the improvement of the government and many of the private institutions that make the city what it is."
Mr. Kabacoff was a former president of Metairie Park Country Day School's board of trustees and a former board member of the Boy Scouts of America's New Orleans Council, the United Negro College Fund and the Urban League of New Orleans. He was co-chairman of the task force that helped land the 1972 Super Bowl for New Orleans.
"The city's been good to me," Mr. Kabacoff said. "I wanted to give something back to the city. I've felt that way, ever since I've done all the things I've done."
Survivors include his wife, Gloria Simmons Kabacoff; a son, Pres Kabacoff; a daughter, Margot K. Peters of Austin, Texas; a sister, Helen Davis of South Orange, N.J.; four grandchildren; and a great-grandchild.
The funeral and burial will be private.
A gathering celebrating Mr. Kabacoff's life will be held Wednesday at 11:30 a.m. in the Mark Twain Courtyard of the New Orleans Hilton. The event will be moved indoors in case of inclement weather.
CORRECTION / CLARIFICATION
Kabacoff daughter's name corrected: The late Lester Kabacoff's daughter is Margot K. Thomas of Austin, Texas. Her name was incorrect in Monday's obituary. (1/27/2004)
---------------------------------------------------
Lester Kabacoff: New Orleans mover, shaker dies
Advocate, The (Baton Rouge, LA) - Tuesday, January 27, 2004
NEW ORLEANS - Lester Kabacoff, who helped develop New Orleans' first television station in 1948 and the World's Fair in 1984, is dead at the age of 90.
He died Sunday.
Kabacoff, born in New York City, was a Wall Street lawyer when he came to New Orleans during World War II and decided to stay.
After the war he became executive assistant to businessman and philanthropist Edgar Stern. During the next half-century, Kabacoff was involved in launching television station WDSU and in the building of hotels, subdivisions, and the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center.
He helped establish civic organizations such as the Council for a Better Louisiana, Public Affairs Research Council, Police Foundation, Metropolitan Area Committee and New Orleans convention bureau.
"Very few people that I know of have contributed more to this city than Lester Kabacoff, not only in terms of physical developments that he initiated and completed but also in terms of his contribution to the improvement of the government and many of the private institutions that make the city what it is," former Mayor Moon Landrieu said.
Restaurateur and longtime friend Ella Brennan said, "I think he's been able to get things done that made other people throw up their hands and say, 'It can't be done.' "When he saw something that could be done, he couldn't stand it if he couldn't make it happen."A plaza and a professorship at Dillard University, a restaurant, and a division of the University of New Orleans all were named for Kabacoff.
"I'm a sort of putter-together fellow," he once told The Times-Picayune. "I do not quit. If I think something's worthwhile doing, I do it."
The son of Russian immigrants, Kabacoff began playing tennis at 12 and won a scholarship to the University of Pennsylvania, where he was team co-captain and earned his undergraduate and law degrees.
A lawyer when the United States entered World War II, Kabacoff volunteered for the Army and applied for officer training.
In 1942, he was sent to New Orleans' Port of Embarkation as a labor-relations officer. His assignment was to keep the port open so munitions and supplies could get to Europe, a tricky task that meant negotiating with often-contentious longshoremen's unions, said Pres Kabacoff, Kabacoff's son.
Survivors include his wife, Gloria Simmons Kabacoff; a son, Pres Kabacoff; a daughter, Margot K. Peters of Austin, Texas; a sister, Helen Davis of South Orange, N.J.; four grandchildren; and a great-grandchild.
The funeral and burial will be private. A gathering celebrating Kabacoff's life will be held Wednesday at the New Orleans Hilton.
championships in his age group the year he turned 70. Mr. Kabacoff used tennis not only for exercise but also for making personal and professional contacts.
In 1931, Mr. Kabacoff and his partner, Bernard Friedman, won the national junior indoor doubles championship. His prowess resulted in a tennis scholarship to the University of Pennsylvania, where Mr. Kabacoff earned undergraduate and law degrees and was the team's co-captain.
He passed the bar examination in 1937 and was hired by the New York firm Garey, Desvernine and Kissam. But when the United States entered World War II, Mr. Kabacoff was impatient to see action, so he volunteered for the Army
and applied for officer training.
A Wall Street lawyer at the outbreak of World War II, Kabacoff volunteered for Army service. The New York native was stationed in New Orleans, where he remained after the war. During the next half-century, he helped launch New Orleans' first television station, WDSU, and, as a real estate developer, built the Royal Orleans Hotel, the New Orleans Hilton and the Riverwalk Shopping Center, all of which revitalized the waterfront area and boosted tourism. He also had a hand in bringing the World's Fair to New Orleans in 1984, and in the development of the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center.
After the war, he became the executive assistant to businessman and philanthropist Edgar Stern; that tie provided access to powerful people with whom Mr. Kabacoff, a strong, driving force since his days on the junior tennis circuit, helped make things happen.
He was a pivotal figure in the development of New Orleans who became known as the Crescent City's father of modern tourism.
In recognition of his contributions to the city, the University of New Orleans named a school in his honor, the Lester E. Kabacoff School of Hotel, Restaurant and Tourism Administration. He served more than three decades on the board of Dillard University, which established a professorship in Kabacoff's name. Among his other accomplishments, he helped establish such civic organizations as the Council for a Better Louisiana, the Public Affairs Research Council, the Police Foundation and the Metropolitan Area Committee.
Kabacoff is survived by his wife, Gloria; a son, Pres; a daughter, Margot K. Peters; a sister, Helen Davis; four grandchildren; and a great-grandchild.
_________________________________________________________________
Lester Kabacoff, 90 of New Orleansis dead at 90
Times-Picayune, The (New Orleans, LA) — Monday, January 26, 2004
CORRECTION APPENDED
Lester Kabacoff, a visionary, public-spirited New Orleans developer whose projects included luxury hotels, subdivisions, the city's first television station and the 1984 world's fair, died Sunday at his New Orleans home. He was 90.
A New York City native who had lived in New Orleans since 1942, Mr. Kabacoff was a Wall Street lawyer who came to the city during World War II and decided to stay. After the war, he became the executive assistant to businessman and philanthropist Edgar Stern; that tie provided access to powerful people with whom Mr. Kabacoff, a strong, driving force since his days on the junior tennis circuit, helped make things happen.
During the next half-century, Mr. Kabacoff assembled teams that built luxury hotels, subdivisions, the 1984 world's fair and the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center. He helped set up WDSU-TV, revitalize the city's flagging tourism industry and establish civic organizations such as the Council for a Better Louisiana, the Public Affairs Research Council, the Police Foundation, the Metropolitan Area Committee and the agency now known as the New Orleans Metropolitan Convention and Visitors Bureau. Through projects such as the New Orleans Hilton and the fair, Mr. Kabacoff helped New Orleanians rediscover the Mississippi River.
"I think he's been able to get things done that made other people throw up their hands and say, 'It can't be done,' " said restaurateur Ella Brennan, a longtime friend. "When he saw something that could be done, he couldn't stand it if he couldn't make it happen."
Mr. Kabacoff's feats earned him an array of tributes. A plaza and a professorship at Dillard University, a restaurant at the Hilton and a division of the University of New Orleans bear his name, and the awards he received include the Mayor's Medal of Honor and The Times-Picayune Loving Cup.
Despite the plaudits, Mr. Kabacoff remained steadfastly humble about his deeds.
"I'm a sort of putter-together fellow," he said in an interview. "I do not quit. If I think something's worthwhile doing, I do it."
Early competitive streak
The son of Russian immigrants, Mr. Kabacoff showed his competitive streak early on the tennis court. He started playing when he was 12 and kept at it for most of his life, winning the state singles and doubles tennis championships in his age group the year he turned 70. Mr. Kabacoff used tennis not only for exercise but also for making personal and professional contacts.
In 1931, Mr. Kabacoff and his partner, Bernard Friedman, won the national junior indoor doubles championship. His prowess resulted in a tennis scholarship to the University of Pennsylvania, where Mr. Kabacoff earned undergraduate and law degrees and was the team's co-captain.
He passed the bar examination in 1937 and was hired by the New York firm Garey, Desvernine and Kissam. But when the United States entered World War II, Mr. Kabacoff was impatient to see action, so he volunteered for the Army and applied for officer training.
In 1942, he was sent to New Orleans' Port of Embarkation as a labor-relations officer. His assignment was to keep the port open so munitions and supplies could get to Europe, a tricky task that meant negotiating with often-contentious black and white longshoremen's unions, said Pres Kabacoff, Mr. Kabacoff's son.
Because of his success in labor relations, Mr. Kabacoff was sent to solve disputes throughout the Gulf Coast area. "If they had a labor problem anywhere in the New Orleans area, they'd ask me to handle it," he said in a privately published memoir.
Tennis at Longue Vue
While on duty in New Orleans, things began to happen in the young officer's personal life.
In 1943, he received an invitation from Lt. William Ewing "Slew" Hester, a fellow tennis buff who later was president of the U.S. Tennis Association, to play at what was described as "the nicest tennis court in New Orleans." It was at Longue Vue, the suburban estate that was home to Edgar and Edith Stern, philanthropists and activists who championed a host of civic, social, cultural and educational causes.
The four became friends and regular tennis partners, forming a group they called the Longue Vue Racquet and Julep Club. Because the Army didn't provide housing for the officers and because the Sterns' children were away, they invited Hester and Mr. Kabacoff to move in.
A year after Mr. Kabacoff had decamped to Longue Vue, he caught a ride to work one morning with his commanding general. Also in the car was Gloria Simmons, the general's secretary. That chance meeting launched a courtship that culminated in an August wedding performed by an Army chaplain at Longue Vue.
The newlyweds honeymooned in New York City. Because Gloria Kabacoff was Catholic and because members of her new spouse's law firm there had social and religious contacts, the couple had another ceremony -- in St. Patrick's Cathedral, with Cardinal Francis Spellman officiating. The Sterns gave a party for them on the roof of the St. Regis Hotel.
Decides to stay
In May 1945, Mr. Kabacoff was admitted to the Louisiana bar. When the war ended, Mr. Kabacoff told his senior partner in New York he had decided to make New Orleans his home. Within a year, Edgar Stern asked Mr. Kabacoff to be his executive assistant and attorney.
"It took me about three seconds to make up my mind and say yes," Mr. Kabacoff said in an interview.
It was a loosely defined job in which Mr. Kabacoff was assigned to see to Edgar Stern's pet projects, becoming not only his protégé but also his alter ego.
"He had gotten tired of going to all these meetings," Mr. Kabacoff said. "My job was to do everything Edgar Stern didn't want to do anymore."
As a result, Stern's causes became Mr. Kabacoff's, among them Dillard University. "He took the torch from Mr. Stern in terms of service at Dillard," Dillard President Michael Lomax said.
Like Stern, Mr. Kabacoff served on the board of trustees, and the Kabacoffs gave generously -- more than $600,000, according to Dillard records. The Gloria and Lester E. Kabacoff Professorship in Business Administration was established in 1996, and Kabacoff Quadrangle has been named in his honor on the Gentilly campus.
In 1998, when Mr. Kabacoff retired after 28 years on the board, including service as treasurer and chairman of the committee on finance and development, he was named a trustee emeritus.
Civic group founder
Working with the Sterns, Mr. Kabacoff helped set up WDSU in 1948 and develop Pontchartrain Park, a Gentilly suburb designed in the early 1950s to give black people a chance to own their own homes.
"It was not built as a segregated community," Mr. Kabacoff said. "It was built to fill a need, and for $14,000 you could buy the best house in Pontchartrain Park."
Mr. Kabacoff also was a founder of civic groups such as the Council for a Better Louisiana, the Public Affairs Research Council and the Metropolitan Area Committee.
But he was also a canny businessman. "He had a lot of drive, and once he set his sights on something, I think he pursued it with a great deal of determination," said Charles A. Ferguson, former editor of The Times-Picayune, a longtime friend of Mr. Kabacoff's and president of Dillard's board of trustees.
In the late 1950s, Mr. Kabacoff masterminded the deal that resulted in the Royal Orleans Hotel (now the Omni Royal Orleans Hotel), the city's first major new hotel in 42 years. These Kabacoff projects followed: the Royal Sonesta, the Dauphine Orleans, Beau Chene subdivision and the New Orleans Hilton, where a restaurant, Kabby's, bears his nickname. The Hilton is part of a riverfront complex that includes the Riverwalk marketplace and One River Place, the luxury high-rise that has been the Kabacoffs' home.
Vision for riverfront
The notion of developing New Orleans' riverfront, an area that had been dominated for decades by warehouses and wharves, seemed logical, Mr. Kabacoff said.
"I've been to Paris; I've been to London," he said. "The nicest places to live in many cities of the world are on the river. We've got this river, with 17 miles of wharves, and 98 percent of the people of New Orleans, until the Moonwalk was built, had never seen the river."
To draw more attention to the riverfront and the adjoining, ignored Warehouse District, Mr. Kabacoff was an early backer of the 1984 world's fair, a splashy venture that delighted visitors but turned into a financial disaster for its investors.
That setback "put him into a funk," Pres Kabacoff said. "He was just sick about the fact that people were hurt. I think that was, perhaps, the most difficult period for him."
But the exposition did have a good long-term effect, Pres Kabacoff said, because it made people aware of the Warehouse District's potential as a site for homes, restaurants, galleries, hotels and offices, resulting in one of the country's major examples of urban revitalization.
Father of tourism
And the fair's Great Hall, which had housed the Louisiana Pavilion and many smaller exhibits, became the nucleus of the building Mr. Kabacoff had long said the city needed: a convention hall big enough to land meetings that were bypassing New Orleans because nothing in the city could house them.
The center, now known as the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center, has been enlarged several times since, expanding beneath and beyond the Crescent City Connection with more growth scheduled. It is the most visible outgrowth of Mr. Kabacoff's determination, born in the early 1970s, to strengthen efforts to attract business and pleasure travelers to the area.
University of New Orleans Chancellor Tim Ryan has called Mr. Kabacoff the father of modern tourism. As a result of Mr. Kabacoff's work and his gifts to UNO, the university's School of Hotel, Restaurant and Tourism Administration was named for him in 1998.
The seed for one of Mr. Kabacoff's last initiatives was planted one night in the mid-1990s. As he and his wife were leaving a Garden District party, their host told them to wait until a private guard could walk them to their car. That made Mr. Kabacoff think about trying to improve law enforcement; the result was the New Orleans Police Foundation, a private organization that strengthens the Police Department by finding money for continuing education, better equipment and support for community policing.
"He not only led the way with his ideas and his compassion, but also with his personal contributions to making it go," said Terry Ebbert, the foundation's former director, who is executive assistant to Mayor Ray Nagin for homeland security and public safety.
Social conscience praised
In summing up Mr. Kabacoff's achievements, former Mayor Moon Landrieu praised his business skills and his social conscience: "Very few people that I know of have contributed more to this city than Lester Kabacoff, not only in terms of physical developments that he initiated and completed but also in terms of his contribution to the improvement of the government and many of the private institutions that make the city what it is."
Mr. Kabacoff was a former president of Metairie Park Country Day School's board of trustees and a former board member of the Boy Scouts of America's New Orleans Council, the United Negro College Fund and the Urban League of New Orleans. He was co-chairman of the task force that helped land the 1972 Super Bowl for New Orleans.
"The city's been good to me," Mr. Kabacoff said. "I wanted to give something back to the city. I've felt that way, ever since I've done all the things I've done."
Survivors include his wife, Gloria Simmons Kabacoff; a son, Pres Kabacoff; a daughter, Margot K. Peters of Austin, Texas; a sister, Helen Davis of South Orange, N.J.; four grandchildren; and a great-grandchild.
The funeral and burial will be private.
A gathering celebrating Mr. Kabacoff's life will be held Wednesday at 11:30 a.m. in the Mark Twain Courtyard of the New Orleans Hilton. The event will be moved indoors in case of inclement weather.
CORRECTION / CLARIFICATION
Kabacoff daughter's name corrected: The late Lester Kabacoff's daughter is Margot K. Thomas of Austin, Texas. Her name was incorrect in Monday's obituary. (1/27/2004)
---------------------------------------------------
Lester Kabacoff: New Orleans mover, shaker dies
Advocate, The (Baton Rouge, LA) - Tuesday, January 27, 2004
NEW ORLEANS - Lester Kabacoff, who helped develop New Orleans' first television station in 1948 and the World's Fair in 1984, is dead at the age of 90.
He died Sunday.
Kabacoff, born in New York City, was a Wall Street lawyer when he came to New Orleans during World War II and decided to stay.
After the war he became executive assistant to businessman and philanthropist Edgar Stern. During the next half-century, Kabacoff was involved in launching television station WDSU and in the building of hotels, subdivisions, and the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center.
He helped establish civic organizations such as the Council for a Better Louisiana, Public Affairs Research Council, Police Foundation, Metropolitan Area Committee and New Orleans convention bureau.
"Very few people that I know of have contributed more to this city than Lester Kabacoff, not only in terms of physical developments that he initiated and completed but also in terms of his contribution to the improvement of the government and many of the private institutions that make the city what it is," former Mayor Moon Landrieu said.
Restaurateur and longtime friend Ella Brennan said, "I think he's been able to get things done that made other people throw up their hands and say, 'It can't be done.' "When he saw something that could be done, he couldn't stand it if he couldn't make it happen."A plaza and a professorship at Dillard University, a restaurant, and a division of the University of New Orleans all were named for Kabacoff.
"I'm a sort of putter-together fellow," he once told The Times-Picayune. "I do not quit. If I think something's worthwhile doing, I do it."
The son of Russian immigrants, Kabacoff began playing tennis at 12 and won a scholarship to the University of Pennsylvania, where he was team co-captain and earned his undergraduate and law degrees.
A lawyer when the United States entered World War II, Kabacoff volunteered for the Army and applied for officer training.
In 1942, he was sent to New Orleans' Port of Embarkation as a labor-relations officer. His assignment was to keep the port open so munitions and supplies could get to Europe, a tricky task that meant negotiating with often-contentious longshoremen's unions, said Pres Kabacoff, Kabacoff's son.
Survivors include his wife, Gloria Simmons Kabacoff; a son, Pres Kabacoff; a daughter, Margot K. Peters of Austin, Texas; a sister, Helen Davis of South Orange, N.J.; four grandchildren; and a great-grandchild.
The funeral and burial will be private. A gathering celebrating Kabacoff's life will be held Wednesday at the New Orleans Hilton.
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