Frank S. Ioppolo will be honored this weekend by the Columbus Citizens Foundation as the recipient of the 1999 Leadership Award for Outstanding Achievement in Business. The award will be presented at a dinner at the Waldorf Astoria on Saturday, Oct. 9. On Monday, Oct. 11, Mr. Ioppolo will join the Grand Marshal and other honorees in leading the annual Columbus Day Parade up Fifth Avenue. The foundation expects more than 50,000 marchers to participate in the event.

Mr. Ioppolo is the executive vice president for business affairs and general counsel for Walt Disney Attractions, Inc. A native of Manhasset, he graduated from Manhasset High School, attended Georgetown University and graduated from C.W. Post College and Fordham University School of Law. Before joining Disney, for 20 years he was associated with the New York law firm of Donovan, Leisure, Newton & Irvine, where he was a senior partner, chairman of the firm's real estate department and chairman of the client development committee. During his 15 years as a partner of the firm his duties included negotiating a wide range of development, joint venture, construction, loan and leasing transactions, as well as real estate and construction-related litigation. In addition to representing corporate clients in the private sector where he represented the Disney companies on many major business transactions, he also represented a variety of major governmental clients such as the State of New York and several of its agencies, including the New York State Housing Finance Agency, the New York State Urban Development Corporation and the State of New York Mortgage Agency.

Mr. Ioppolo has been involved in countless important negotiations but perhaps none received more attention than his 1995 negotiations on behalf of Disney for the renovation of the New Amsterdam Theater at 42nd Street in Manhattan which became the catalyst for the redevelopment of the Times Square area. In that deal New York City and New York State agreed to provide Disney with low-interest loans to cover more than 75 percent of the $34 million restoration, in addition to other concessions. According to a report in The New York Times: "In the eyes of city and state officials, the largess made perfect sense. To them, the company's decision to take on the New Amsterdam, announced with great fanfare is the linchpin in their long and often frustrating effort to transform 42nd Street between Seventh and Eighth Avenues from a shadowy strip of rundown theaters and sex shops into a boulevard of bright lights and tourist attractions." Clay Lifflander, president of the city's Economic Development Corporation, said on the negotiations: "I'm not going to claim we'll get a market return on the deal but we subsidized it to get the other activity on the street. In the retail business, it's what you call a loss leader." Four years later the city can look at the vastly improved conditions in the area and call it a success.

Mr. Ioppolo and his wife, Mella, are presently residents of Orlando, FL. They have two children, Vanessa, a television script supervisor, and Frank Jr., an attorney in the Orlando and New York City offices of the law firm of Greenberg Traurig.