Steven Horowitz

Biography: Steven G. Horowitz Chief Legal and Risk Officer (retired) Open Space Institute New York, NY Partner (retired) Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton LLP New York, NY Steven G. Horowitz served through mid-2020 as Chief Legal and Risk Officer of Open Space Institute (OSI), a land conservation NGO based in New York. OSI is active in the eastern U.S., with operations from Maine to Florida. Mr. Horowitz joined OSI in February 2019. Mr. Horowitz served through 2018 as a partner of Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton LLP based in New York, where his practice concentrated on U.S. and international real estate finance and investment transactions, including joint ventures, mortgage finance, subordinate debt, capital markets, entity formation, restructuring and real estate-related mergers and acquisitions. He represented commercial and investment banks, foreign and domestic institutional investors, sovereign wealth funds and a variety of companies on real estate matters throughout the United States, Asia, Latin America and Europe. Mr. Horowitz is internationally distinguished as one of the best real estate lawyers by Chambers USA, The International Who's Who of Business Lawyers and numerous similar guides. He is a Lecturer in Law at Columbia Law School on real estate finance, regularly publishes articles and presents at seminars on real estate topics, including those sponsored by the American College of Real Estate Lawyers, American Bar Association-American Law Institute, Practising Law Institute, Anglo-American Real Property Institute and the New York City Bar Association. Prior to joining Cleary Gottlieb in 1987, Mr. Horowitz was a partner at Hill & Barlow in Boston, specializing in real estate development and finance, land use and environmental law. He also served as United States District Court Monitor and as law clerk to the Honorable Joseph L. Tauro at the United States District Court in Boston. As Court Monitor, Mr. Horowitz oversaw implementation of consent decrees aimed at upgrading most of the mental disability institutions in Massachusetts and developing community based services for more than 5,000 residents. Before attending law school, he served as a city planner in the New York City Department of City Planning, focusing on housing and community development. Throughout his legal career, Mr. Horowitz has undertaken pro bono legal services in numerous areas, including such projects as the clean-up of Boston Harbor and the creation of the Massachusetts Water Resources Authority; budget reform in the Boston public school system; preservation of Sterling Forest, comprising 17,000 acres of woodlands in Rockland and Orange Counties, New York that had been proposed as a new town development for 120,000 residents; development of a new theater for Shakespeare and other classic drama in Brooklyn, the first built in New York in 50 years; and, currently, conversion of the QueensWay, a 3.5 mile long abandoned rail line designed as Queens’ answer to the High Line. Mr. Horowitz received J.D. and M.P.P. degrees, cum laude, from Harvard Law School and the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, where he was an editor of the Harvard Law Review. He received an undergraduate degree from Yale University, magna cum laude. He is a member of the American College of Real Estate Lawyers, a past governor of the Anglo-American Real Property Institute, a past Chair of the New York State Bar Association’s Real Property Law Section and a member of advisory boards for the Trust for Public Land, the Legal Aid Society and Chicago Title Insurance Company. Updated February 2019