“Bernie,” as he was known to his friends and colleagues, and “Bud,” as he was known to his family, was born in Jersey City in 1928. He attended Syracuse University and received a degree in landscape architecture. He established a practice in New York City and worked on numerous regional projects, including the landscaping and design for the new Palisades Interstate Parkway in the 1950s. He and his wife Eraine, an interior designer, moved to Palisades where he became active in community affairs. Local residents commissioned him to design Tappan’s Memorial Park in 1966 after their successful fight to prevent it from becoming a housing development.

Shortly thereafter he was elected by his colleagues on the newly formed ACABOR to become its chairman, a position he held continuously for almost forty years. Under his guidance, ACABOR worked in partnership with developers and new businesses in a quickly expanding Orangetown to ensure that the fundamental character of the town remained constant. The Board won awards for its treatment of public spaces, including IBM Palisades (by relocating the buildings and parking areas away from Route 9W) Blue Hill Plaza (reducing the scale of the original proposal from three high rises to one and reducing its parking by half) and the Pearl River Hilton (preserving the existing woodland area along Veterans Memorial Highway).

“In the last 50 years, possibly no person had a more profound positive impact on the development of the Town of Orangetown than Bud Albin,” said his nephew Thom Kleiner of Sparkill, a former Supervisor of Orangetown.

In 2005 he settled permanently in Arizona. Other than Thom Kleiner, he is survived by his sister Marlene Kleiner of Grandview and his nephew Eric Kleiner of Nyack. A service of remembrance will be held at the Palisades Community Center, 675 Oak Tree Road, at 4 p.m. on Saturday January 12th. For more information, call 845-499-4366.