Industry great, Maurice Paprin, dies at age of 85.

Maurice Paprin, a prominent New York builder, developer and owner and an outspoken leader of liberal causes, died Friday, November 25, at New York Hospital. The cause was an injury resulting from a fall. He was 85 years old.

Paprin entered the real estate field in the mid 1950s, starting with single-family homes and then expanding into apartment buildings and large city subsidized housing complexes. As president of Douglass Urban Corporation and several other real estate companies, he built thousands of apartments, many of them in Harlem and other underserved communities. Later Paprin was the organizing partner of a four-person group that purchased a seven-store chain of department stores from the Altman Foundation, including the flagship Altman store on 34th Street. The stores were later sold to developers.

Paprin also served as president of the Associated Builders and Owners of Greater New York for 14 years, a group composed of New York's leading builders and developers. During that period he wrote a regular column for The Real Estate Weekly.

But even as he practiced real estate, Paprin took on a whole other career as a social activist. He was the founding member and director of the Foundation for Social Change, founder and president of the Fund for New Priorities in America and most recently president of the Business Labor & Community Coalition of New York.

Paprin was born on August 26, 1920 in the Bronx and graduated from Townsend Harris High School and then City College in 1939. He earned a masters in history from the University of Wisconsin and taught history for a brief time at New York University before embarking on his dual careers of real estate and social activism.

As the head of The Fund for New Priorities, Mr. Paprin spearheaded many conferences and seminars in Washington, among them a Watergate investigative conference which was a precursor to eventual Congressional hearings on the issue.

When many of his contemporaries had withdrawn from the limelight, Paprin refused to slow down. He continued to run his national Fund for New Priorities taking on such issues as plans for a Global News Network and World Peace Corps, and the war in Iraq. His New York-based Business, Labor & Community Coalition sponsored political debates and championed welfare reform, intermodal freight for New York and housing for the poor, among many controversial issues.

Paprin is survived by his wife of 23 years, and his three sons, Seth, Yale and Frederick and daughter Judith.

Services were held on Sunday, November 27, at Riverside Memorial Chapel in New York. Contributions may be made to the charity of one's choice.