Anthony Notaro Jr., who served on Community Board 1 for more than two decades, until recently as chair, died on Dec. 30 in Basking Ridge, NJ, after a seven-year battle with head and neck cancer. He was 69. The board is dedicating its work over this next month to his memory; Borough President Gale Brewer declared Dec. 28, 2020 “Anthony Notaro Appreciation Day.”

“Anthony Notaro was a leader, a mentor, and above all else, a friend,” said Lucian Reynolds, the board’s district manager. “I can speak for all of the members of the office to say that we miss him terribly and send our sympathies to everyone who was lucky enough to have him in their lives.”

Notaro lived at Liberty Terrace in Battery Park City, where he was also president of the condo board there, starting in 1998. The building’s management noted that his contributions to the building and the neighborhood were “vast and accomplished. He will be sorely missed as a friend, neighbor and esteemed member of our community.”

A native of Brooklyn, he went to high school at Cathedral Prep and graduated from St. Francis College in Brooklyn Heights in 1974 with degree in psychology. In keeping with his community interests, he also acquired a certificate in urban horticulture from the Brooklyn Botanic Garden in 2003. He married Susan Nitahara in 2015.

Notaro was chair of CB1 from 2016 until a couple months before this past election in June, when he was succeeded by Tammy Meltzer. Over the decades he served as Battery Park City Committee chair as well as president of the First Precinct Community Council. In 2002, he helped organize the annual Battery Park City Block Party, and a year later, he helped found the Community Emergency Response Team. He was a leader of the Battery Park City Homeowner’s Coalition and was deeply involved in the issues that affected the neighborhood, including the development of the World Trade Center site, the future of the Battery Park City ballfields and the neighborhood’s recovery from Superstorm Sandy.

Professionally he worked in technology for more than four decades, most recently as the regional sales manager for Luminex Software, which provides corporate data services.

He said this about his tenure at CB1, when interviewed by The Broadsheet in June, acknowledging how lucky we are to be in our corner of the city: “Leadership for me is about listening, learning and building teams. Behaving this way transforms our role from simply advisory to being a real partner with government entities…My hope is that we can extend our leadership to other parts of our city, so that all residents share in what New York can and should offer. We don’t look at the pie and ask how it can be split. Instead, we ask how can to make the pie bigger for everyone.”

A funeral mass will be held on Friday, Jan. 8, at Queen of All Saints Church in Brooklyn. Due to social distancing concerns, the family will set up a livestream via Zoom. Memorial donations may be made in his honor to Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center’s Head and Neck Research Department.