CRAIG FUNERAL HOME - On Line Obits
Flagler Beach, Florida
Saturday, September 6, 2008
Funeral services for Alan Smolen 88 of Palm Coast, the retired President of Community Development Corporation of ITT, will be held on Monday, September 8 at 1:00 p.m. in Temple Beth Shalom, 40 Wellington Drive, Palm Coast with Rabbi Merrill Shapiro officiating. Burial will follow in Flagler Palms Memorial Gardens with Military Honors rendered by the U.S. Army Honor Guard.
Mr. Smolen, a former resident of Brooklyn NY and Fair Lawn NJ, passed away on Saturday, September 6, 2008 in Florida Hospital Flagler. He was born in Brooklyn NY on February 12, 1920 a son of the late Max and Pauline Rosenstauch Smolen.
Mr. Smolen was an employee of ITT for 40 years serving as president of the Community Development Corporation which developed the City of Palm Coast from 1975-1985. He was a member of Temple Beth Shalom, a member of the Board of Directors of several different organizations in Flagler and Volusia Counties including Daytona State College which in April of 2008 dedicated the amphitheater in his honor. Mr. Smolen was a veteran serving as a 1st Lt. in the US Army during World War II and the Korean Conflict.
Preceding him in death was his wife of 61 years, Sylvia Smolen in 2005.
Surviving are his two daughters, Helen Smith of Ringwood NJ, and Susan Smolen of Amsterdam Netherlands, three grandchildren, Jeffrey Smith, Douglas Smith, and Cecile Entleitner, two great grandchildren, Sophia Smith and Douglas Mitchell Smith and his companion Jeanne Siegel of Palm Coast.
Memorial contributions are suggested to Temple Beth Shalom, 40 Wellington Drive, Palm Coast FL 32164 or the charity of one's choice.
THE DAYTONA BEACH NEWS-JOURNAL
Daytona Beach, Florida
Sunday, September 7, 2008
LEADER WHO SHAPED PALM COAST DIES AT 88
By Anne Geggis, Staff Writer
The man credited with shaping what has become the area's second largest city - Palm Coast - died Saturday. Alan Smolen of Palm Coast was 88.
Smolen came to this area from New York in 1975 to become president of ITT Community Development Corp. when Palm Coast was little more than 68,000 acres of mostly uninhabited pine forest and swampland.
ITT initially envisioned the area as a massive development with a population of 750,000. Four years after Smolen arrived; however, ITT had reached a comprehensive plan agreement with the state that limited development to 42,000 acres and the planned population to about 225,000.
Steering that vision into reality, Smolen had his work cut out for him, said the man who succeeded Smolen when he retired in 1985.
"There were a lot of things that had to be corrected," said James Gardner of Palm Coast, recalling some canals dug that the Army Corps of Engineers refused to permit. "He did an outstanding job of getting through the permitting stage and correcting some of the things that had gone wrong in the earlier years."
Gardner said Smolen led the planning of some 550 miles of road, sewer lines and water lines before large-scale planned developments became the norm in Florida.
Another former ITT employee, Jerry Full, who worked with Smolen as vice president for corporate relations from 1983 until Smolen's retirement, recalled a no-nonsense boss who always did what he said he was going to do.
"He was a guy who demanded of everyone what he demanded of himself," Full said.
Full, who plans to talk at Smolen's service Monday at 1 p.m. at Temple Beth Shalom in Palm Coast, said his former boss wasn't entirely pleased with how Palm Coast evolved. Other developers moved into the area after ITT sold out in the early 1990s.
"I think that he was concerned that there was too much duplication, too much suburbanization that was all identical," Full said, "He was an advocate of diversity and change and having some freshness in the community."
