Mahlon ‘Sandy’ Apgar IV, ‘altruistic’ city planner and Defense Department intelligence officer, dies

Mahlon “Sandy” Apgar IV, a real estate strategist who previously worked for the Defense Department, died of cancer Dec. 11 at his Boston home. The former Ruxton and Federal Hill resident was 82.

Mr. Apgar served as assistant secretary of the Army for installations and environment during the Bill Clinton administration.

Mahlon Apgar IV, known as Sandy, was born in Paterson, New Jersey and raised in Ridgewood. The son of Mahlon Apgar III, a land agent, and Dorothea Tipper Apgar, the former fashion editor of the old News American, he was a 1962 graduate of Blair Academy in Blairstown, New Jersey.

He earned a degree from Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire, where he was a honors student and member of the Army Reserve Officers’ Training Corps.

He was among a group of Dartmouth students who rode buses through the South in support of the Civil Rights-era Freedom Riders movement and was jailed in Jackson, Mississippi.

He co-led the Delta Tau Delta chapter’s secession from the national fraternity to protest policies of racial discrimination, he recalled in an unpublished memoir.

Mr. Apgar served in the Army from 1962 to 1965 and was stationed in Coburg, Germany.

According to that memoir, he was the officer-in-charge of the border resident office on the East-West border, where he led a team of analysts developing intelligence on East German and Soviet activities.

He later attended Magdalen College at Oxford University, where he studied the history of U.K. new town establishment and later earned a master’s degree from Harvard Business School.

He joined the old shopping mall developer Rouse Company and assisted in opening the then-new planned city of Columbia.

In 1979 he founded Apgar & Company, an advisory firm specializing in large-scale corporate real estate and facilities management.

In 1998, Harvard Business Review published his article, “The Alternative Workplace: Changing Where and How People Work” about working from home.

The article described how companies could cut costs while boosting employee satisfaction and productivity by converting to remote work.

He was featured in a 2003 New York Times article, “At Home (of Course) with a Telecommuter.”

“Tucked away near Ruxton …, his base of operations bears little resemblance to the nook, kitchen table or dual-purpose room that constitutes a typical home office,” the article said. “[His] office, really a collection of work stations, is equipped with computers and fax machines and has broadband access and separate fax and telephone lines; there is room for colleagues or visiting clients.”

At the Defense Department Mr. Apgar led an initiative to improve housing on military bases.

“Sandy had a brilliant mind and the heart of a philanthropist,” said former U.S. Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski. “He was an altruistic city planner and real estate consultant who has given much of his time and talent to our …country and world. There has never been a task too big or small, and he has always stood up for what is right and fair.”

From 2002 to 2006, Mr. Apgar was a partner and director of Boston Consulting Group and ran an infrastructure and real estate practice.

“He was one of the most tenacious people that I ever knew, and one of the friendliest,” said his brother-in-law, Travers Nelson. “He enjoyed meeting people and made friends well and easily. He always did well, for himself and his family, but always, and only, by doing good in the world.”

Mr. Apgar edited two books, including “New Perspectives on Community Development” and wrote more than 150 articles for various publications.

For nearly five years he owned the former Shaftsbury, Vermont house of poet Robert Frost, whose “Mending Wall” was on the 95-acre property. He donated the undeveloped acreage in 2008 to a nonprofit organization for its preservation.

Mr. Apgar had lived in Ruxton and later purchased a Federal Hill home on Warren Avenue overlooking Federal Hill Park.

Mr. Apgar and his wife created South Harbor Renaissance, a nonprofit that worked with city and state leaders to renovate and upgrade the grounds and facilities of Federal Hill Park.

“What was remarkable and unique about Sandy is that he accomplished massive military base improvements and urban revitalization projects across the globe, whose size, scope and complexity are difficult to grasp, yet he takes the smallest details about a small, local neighborhood park just as seriously,” said William C. “Bill” Ferguson IV, President of the Maryland State Senate.

He was a lecturer at Harvard, Princeton, Yale, and Oxford where he created a real estate course at the Said Business School.

Mr. Apgar and his wife, the former Anne Demarest Nelson, established the Apgar Family Awards to recognize the work of teachers. Recipients included educators at Gilman and Roland Park Country School.

Survivors include his wife of 53 years, Anne Demarest Nelson Apgar; two sons, Frederick Clayton Demarest Apgar, of San Diego, California, and James Campbell Nelson Apgar, of Boston; a daughter, Sarah Elisabeth Tipper Apgar, of Freeport, Maine; and three grandchildren.

A funeral service is planned for the spring.