LOWELL -- After 33 years at the helm of the Center City Committee, Bill Lipchitz is stepping down to assume a reduced role with the downtown advocacy organization.
By Michael Lafleur, mlafleur@lowellsun.com
LOWELL -- After 33 years at the helm of the Center City Committee, Bill Lipchitz is stepping down to assume a reduced role with the downtown advocacy organization.
He will be replaced as the volunteer body's president by Mehmed Ali, coordinator of the Lowell National Historical Park's Patrick J. Mogan Cultural Center, during the group's annual meeting next Tuesday. Ali previously served as committee vice president.
"It's time," Lipchitz, the deputy director of the Lowell-based social service agency Community Teamwork Inc., said in an interview yesterday. "It's been a long run, and I think we accomplished quite a few things."
Founded in 1972, the Center City Committee actually began life as an arm of Lowell's city government. It was a blue-ribbon panel composed of members selected by former City Manager James Sullivan, chaired by then-City Councilor Robert Kennedy and funded with $400,000 federal grants in each of its first three years of existence.
Among other things, the first such grant paid for one of the earliest studies of creating an urban national park in downtown Lowell.
Lipchitz became the committee president in 1974.
The next year, the committee gave the $50,000 remaining from its federal funds to the newly formed Lowell Development and Finance Corp., a consortium of local banks that specializes in providing low-interest loans to downtown businesses and ventures as well as various micro-finance efforts, such as a down-payment assistance program for first-time homebuyers in Lowell. The committee received an interest in the LDFC in exchange for its gift and today still holds a seat on the LDFC board.
George Duncan, founder and chairman of Enterprise Bank & Trust Co., one of the original Center City Committee members, described Lipchitz as "by far one of Lowell's most dedicated citizens."
"He's probably the longest serving chairman on any sort of committee that the city has ever seen," Duncan said. "He's just one of those outstanding citizens who deserves a lot of credit. There are very few like him."
During the years, the committee has focused on numerous ways to improve the downtown. In 1994, Lipchitz and the committee sponsored a forum that featured former Baltimore Mayor Kurt Schmoke, who advocated the construction of something like the Tsongas Arena, then a controversial endeavor in Lowell.
Duncan said committee under Lipchitz is "the only group that's had a long term history of dealing primarily with downtown issues on a grass-roots level. He provides a forum that doesn't exist in any other organization in the city."
The Center City Committee now includes representatives of every "stakeholder" in downtown Lowell, from UMass Lowell and Middlesex Community College, to business owners, residents, the national park, city of Lowell, Lowell Regional Transit Authority and the Lowell Police Department. Center City Committee meetings are held Tuesdays starting at 8:30 a.m. in The Coffee Mill, at 23 Palmer St. They are open to all.
"It acts as a unifier, the umbrella group to have everybody share information and work on all projects collaboratively," Ali said.
Acting Lowell Police Superintendent Kenneth Lavallee, who attends the weekly meetings, said the committee under Lipchitz guided police efforts in many ways, including its recent emphasis on enforcing crosswalk violations and increasing police visibility downtown.
Lavallee, who served on the committee nomination board that recommended Ali as president, said Lipchitz maintained "a cohesiveness" in the group was instrumental in suggesting improvements for downtown Lowell.
Lipchitz will continue to serve as the organization's secretary.
"I'm glad he's going to stay involved," Lavallee said. "Bill's not going far at all."
This story appeared in the Lowell Sun on Tuesday, March 27, 2007