SEEMINGLY ‘FRIEND’LY PARTING: It seems like just yesterday that we were photographing Gregory Boroff and a crowd of A-listers — Sarah Jessica Parker, Matthew Broderick, CeeLo, state Senator Brad Hoylman and Hudson River Park Trust C.E.O. Madelyn Wils — on the “green carpet” at the Friends of Hudson River Park’s annual fall gala up at Chelsea Piers. We didn’t realize it back then, but, as it turned out, it was also Boroff’s last month with the Friends as its executive director. “Yes, I returned to City Harvest where I worked 17 years ago,” Boroff recently told us. “I love Friends and Hudson River Park, but I decided to return to the hunger-relief sector.” He’s now the “food-rescuing” group’s chief external relations officer. Scott Lawin, vice chairperson of Friends of Hudson River Park, said, “We were disappointed to see Gregory go, but he had an excellent opportunity to return to City Harvest that he felt he couldn’t pass up.” In the meantime, Connie Fishman, Wils’s predecessor as C.E.O and president of the Trust, is serving as the interim executive director of the Friends while they conduct a search for a permanent director later this year. “There’s been no shift in the organization’s focus or priorities, and we don’t foresee one in the future,” Lawin told us. (In case you are not a Hudson River Park junkie, the Trust is the state-city authority that operates and is building what remains to be built of the 4-mile-long waterfront park. The Friends are the Trust’s private fundraising wing. They used to be the park’s main watchdog group, and sometimes sued over park issues, winning millions for the park.) Boroff was with the Friends for about three-and-a-half years, and definitely brought a sense of excitement to the group. In 2014, he spearheaded the HRPK Experience Auction, in which people could bid to sailboat ride with Villager Brooke Shields or drive golf balls at Chelsea Piers with Momofuku’s David Chang. June 2015 saw the inaugural Hudson River Park Games, in which corporate teams and individual competitors faced off in tests of athletic skill, while raising funds for the park. He previously was vice president and director of development for amfAR, the Foundation for AIDS Research. Lawin writes a talking point in this week’s issue of The Villager about Pier 40 and the community’s opportunity to help plan its redevelopment, which seems to be inevitable at this point.
