Otis Pitts, who spent decades building Liberty City, revitalizing low-income areas, dies at 80
Otis Pitts Jr. spent decades lifting Miami-Dade’s low-income communities by strategically rebuilding them, bringing affordable housing to those most in need.
His work brought him national attention, numerous prestigious awards and even an appointment by former President Bill Clinton.
Pitts, who died of natural causes in Miami on Christmas Day at 80, according to his daughter, leaves a rich legacy.
“He’s just a remarkable man,” his daughter Otoria Pitts told the Miami Herald. “He loved his community and was committed to seeing his community be built and developed and providing housing for individuals.”
Sprouting from Overtown’s roots
Pitts was born in Camilla, Georgia, on July 8, 1942, one of eight children, his sister said. Not yet 3, Pitts moved to Miami with his family and was raised in the city. His father was a Miami police officer. A self-described “child of the ‘60s,” Pitts told the Herald in a 1998 profile that “work must have meaning,” echoing 1960s’ social activism values.
“For all the great things Otis Pitts did for the community, I knew him as he was growing up, wearing short pants and shooting marbles with my younger brother Adam aka Cowboy,” Miami Herald columnist Bea Hines wrote in remembrance of her friend. “Somehow we always knew Otis would ‘amount to something,’ as the older folks used to say. He was smart and sharp-witted, even as a boy. Otis grew up to be someone I could depend on to give me good advice when I was bringing up my two sons as a single mom, and my brother was away in the Air Force.”
In 1998, at age 56, Pitts stood on the 31st floor of the Biscayne View Apartments surveying Overtown — his boyhood home — with a Herald reporter and looked toward the grand views of Biscayne Bay on one side and the remnants of the neighborhood’s history like the Lyric Theater and the Dorsey House on the other. He shared his vision for reviving a Miami neighborhood that was torn asunder when I-95 was built through its heart in 1957.
“I grew up in a place known as the alley right over there, and I knew Overtown when it was a bustling area,” Pitts said from his vantage point. “From Northwest Sixth Street all the way to Northwest 20th Street there was nothing but businesses — clothing stores, restaurants, food stores, beauty shops, dry cleaners, bars. Besides the Lyric, we had the Ritz, the Modern, and the Capitol movie theaters and along here there was practically a hotel on every corner.
“You can’t turn back history, but every time I come up here I see the potential,” Pitts said at the time, and he’d make others see the potential a major part of his life’s work.
READ MORE: If these walls could talk — landmarks tell story of Miami’s rich Black cultural history
A Miami police family
Before his award-winning work in urban revitalization, Pitts joined the Miami Police Department in 1970. He had previously joined the Army after dropping out of Miami Northwestern High School and that’s where he learned about law enforcement.
He had an example at home. His father, Otis Pitts Sr., was one of the city’s first Black officers.
“My father had the privilege of pinning my badge on me,” Pitts said. The younger Pitts served in the force for five years and was guided by his version of hometown pride.
“My father loved Miami,” Otoria Pitts said. “He traveled all over the country and was enlisted in the military at 17 and lived in Landstuhl, Germany, where he was a young military policeman. Despite having traveled all over the world, Miami was his favorite place.”
His classmates from Miami Northwestern proudly accepted him as a member of the Class of 1960, his daughter said. “He was very close to his classmates.”
As a beat cop assigned to Liberty City, Pitts built relationships in the community and tried to get the citizens involved in policing, the Herald reported. He focused on helping the kids at the Belafonte-Tacolcy community center — its name, in part, for entertainer Harry Belafonte, who had provided financial assistance. Sometimes Pitts had to mediate disputes between residents and his fellow officers.
The Belafonte Tacolcy Center, formed in 1966, is a non-profit organization aimed to help Liberty City’s youth and community.
“I was almost denied a raise because my enforcement actions were so low,” Pitts told the Herald.
Work with Miami youth
In 1975, after a brief stint teaching at what was then called Miami-Dade Community College and its Criminal Justice Institute, Pitts resigned from the police department to run the Belafonte-Tacolcy Center full-time as its executive director. “There were people who thought I was crazy,” Pitts had said.
But Pitts knew how to navigate the bumpy terrain of bringing up youth.
“Otis was an old soul, even when he was young,” Hines said. “I clearly remember one incident when my older son was 19 and attending the then Miami-Dade Community College and announced that he was moving in with his girlfriend. I was distraught. After all, he was 19. Over lunch the next day, I shared the information with Otis and some other guys from the neighborhood. Otis was with the Belafonte-Tacolcy Center in Liberty City at the time. He listened as I told him what Rick wanted to do. He simply said: ‘That can’t happen. He’s too young. Besides, what would Ms. Ida Belle say?’” the Herald columnist said.
Ms. Ida Belle was Hines’ no-nonsense mother. “The mention of her name from Otis brought me back to my senses. That evening I had a long talk with Rick and to my surprise, he listened — and stayed home until he enlisted in the U.S. Army a few years later,” Hines said.
About five years later, the aftermath of Liberty City’s May 1980 Arthur McDuffie race riots set Pitts on a new career path.
READ MORE: From ashes to activism: Liberty City’s 7th Avenue transformation to hub for social change
Dorothy Jenkins Fields, historian and founder of The Black Archives at the Historic Lyric Theater, told the Herald that Pitts became a “community organizer whose leadership helped improve economic conditions in Liberty City and served as a model throughout the country.”
Pitts set out to create an economic environment where the community would see a marked improvement in the quality of goods and services, job growth and entrepreneurial actives, Otoria Pitts wrote.
To foster this environment, he founded Tacolcy Economic Development Corporation (TEDC), whose members included neighborhood residents and local leaders from the government, banks, foundations and corporations.
Dewey Knight III, who worked alongside Pitts at TEDC, said of his mentor, “He was a brilliant man who never lost the common touch. That always amazes me. We both are products of Liberty City. The poorest people would come to our office every day and he fed so many people in the communities and helped with jobs. But he was also brilliant in terms of development with compassion.”
Knight recalls one of the first developments in Liberty City at the time that Pitts helped build: The Edison Towers.
“We had to go before the county’s housing board which was comprised of a lot of major developers in the county. And one of them, who had gotten millions of subsidies from the county for his office building, stated that the good people of Liberty City did not have to have central air conditioning. They did not need it. It was too costly. Mr. Pitts eloquently dissected and dismantled him and passionately told him that the people of Liberty City deserve the same type of housing as he had in his developments,” Knight said.
At the time, Edison Towers was the only shopping center in the community and the first multifamily, low-income housing built in Liberty City in decades.
Knight described the fight for the towers as a spark to a new trend that spread across the county that would see affordable housing having more than the bare essentials.
“They started putting money into it,” Knight said. “Now you can go into affordable housing sites, apartments, and the amenities equal market rate apartments. He started something new in Dade County and I would like to think that he was one of the trailblazers for those 30 or 40,000 units that have been created.”
Recognized talent
Pitts was named a 1990 MacArthur Fellow, also known as the Genius Grant, just one of many awards he would be honored with.
The Genius Grant is awarded annually by the John D. & Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation to 20 or 30 individuals who have shown extraordinary originality and dedication in their creative pursuits, Dorothy Fields noted.
After receiving the $295,000 fellowship in 1990, Pitts told the Herald he was “overwhelmed” by the honor and the opportunity. “I feel it is something you never earn by yourself. It’s a challenge to rededicate myself.”
His community works also brought presidential attention.
In 1992, President Clinton selected Pitts to serve as the first Deputy Assistant Secretary and Federal Coordinator of Long-Term Recovery for Hurricane Andrew, one of the nation’s deadliest and costliest natural disasters.
Carole Ann Taylor, his friend of 25 years, recalled he served his appointment with honor.
“When he got appointed by President Clinton to oversee the Hurricane Andrew recovery he became the hurricane czar and never did I ever see him brag about anything he did. He would just do it,” Taylor said.
NBC News named him “Citizen of the Week” and the Black Lawyers Association named him “Citizen of the Year.” He was also the recipient of the Charles Whited “Spirit of Excellence Award” from the Miami Herald.
Pitts’ decades of experience in affordable housing and commercial development opened doors to appointments on several development related boards and councils, including the Greater Miami Chamber of Commerce.
Taylor, who first met Pitts when her boss, former Miami Mayor Maurice Ferre, introduced the pair, defined Pitts as a “service leader,” she said. “He spent his life either working or studying. That was the life he loved and that he led. He had such a beautiful mind. A thoughtful person, a caring person and he cared mostly for his family and his community.”
Founding new ground
In 1996 Pitts expanded his efforts by founding Peninsula Developers, a South Florida real estate firm that aimed to build retail, office and multifamily projects throughout Florida.
According to Miami Herald archives, Pitts wanted his firm’s affordable housing projects to fit in with more affluent apartment complexes and not “have to equate with unattractive housing.”
“There are a lot of people doing affordable housing now, but more in-fill stuff needs to occur,” Pitts said at the time. “The problem is that accumulating land is very difficult because ownership is so fragmented.”
His daughter is now president of Peninsula Developers. “It’s an honor to do that. We’re committed to continuing the work that he started,” Otoria Pitts said.
Survivors, services
Pitts’ survivors include his son Otis K. Pitts, Jr.; daughters Othius Susan Pitts and Otoria Virchelle Pitts; five grandchildren, two great-grandchildren; two sisters and four brothers.
His viewing is from 4 p.m. to 7 p.m., Jan. 13, at Gregg L. Mason Funeral Home, 10936 NE 6th Ave. Funeral services and a homegoing celebration is at 11 a.m., Jan. 14, at New Birth Baptist Church, 2300 NW 135th St.
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