Known for Midwestern toughness and an incredible heart, Alyce Robertson dies at 65
Alyce Marie Robertson, whose revitalization of the Miami Downtown Development Authority during her 11-year-run as its director spurred significant growth for the region, died Friday morning after a three-year battle with cancer, her husband Neil Robertson said.
Robertson was 65. Her legacy in South Florida may number that many more years to come.
“Sometimes it takes an outsider to come in,” said her friend Tadd Schwartz, whose firm, Schwartz Media, represents the Miami DDA.
“Coming from Indiana, Miami looked like a playground. But Alyce started at the bottom, worked her way up in the county, and saw this opportunity to awaken this sleeping gem called Downtown Miami and she did it and it’s an example for all of us,” Schwartz said. “That will be her legacy for her 40-plus years in government — to get downtown back on track and, God bless her, she did it.”
The DDA she inherited is an independent agency of the City of Miami created in 1965 to grow and strengthen the economic vitality of the downtown area. The DDA is funded by a tax levy on properties within its district, which is made up of 3.8 square miles east of I-95, west of Biscayne Bay, south of I-195, and north of the Rickenbacker Causeway.
40 years in county government
When Robertson moved to Miami from South Bend, Indiana, in 1979, as a management trainee for Miami-Dade County, the Miami Herald noted that the downtown skyline boasted but two “towers’‘ — the old courthouse and the Freedom Tower — “and the Cocaine Cowboys were about to stampede.”
Before joining the DDA, Robertson had spent nearly 30 years in Miami-Dade County government in a variety of positions, including the budget office, the county manager’s office and 10 years as the assistant director of the Department of Environmental Resources Management (DERM) where she supervised the education and outreach and the enforcement divisions of the department.
“She referred to herself as a can-do bureaucrat and that was always her approach,” her husband said. “It’s typical in government to say, ‘No, we can’t do that.’ Her approach was, ‘Yes, we are going to figure out a way to do it.”
Adopt-a-Tree
Neil Robertson, a Miami attorney, cites his wife’s Adopt-a-Tree initiative when she was with DERM in 2000 as one of her greatest successes. “Adopt a Tree has planted 215,500 trees. I just got the number,” he said.
During the 2000 Bush-Gore presidential race, Tallahassee was tied up trying to figure who had won the presidency and a citrus disease had wiped out thousands of trees in Florida. Robertson wanted to replace that canopy.
“She went to her staff and said, ‘Write me up something on how we are going to ask the state for money.’ They came back with a proposal to ask for $200,000,” her husband said.
She wasn’t satisfied. She wanted to know: How many trees were lost? How much was each tree worth? She instructed her staff to get these exact figures. The number her staff came back with was $5 million.
“She said, ‘We’ll ask the state for $3 million to plant trees.’ Tallahassee was busy with the recount so she’s out shopping for Christmas and I think it was the 23rd of December and she got a message that there’s a fax coming over with a contract for $6 million to give you trees.’”
Robertson rushed over to collect the contract and beat the state’s Dec. 31 deadline. Over the holiday she got the county attorney to look over the contract and got Miami’s city manager to sign off on it and she sent it to Tallahassee.
“By Jan. 3, she has a $6 million check in her hand and no program at all. She created Adopt-a-Tree. That program’s still running today,” her husband said.
“I learned how to wield both the carrot and the stick,” Robertson told the Herald in 2012 about her approach in dealing with often unwieldy governmental bodies. “I would much rather wield the carrot and educate people as to why a sustainable environment is both in their human interest but also their economic interest. I also learned by being part of a large bureaucracy how to get things done in spite of it.”
Robertson’s background
Robertson was born to Mary Ann and Marvin Kwiecinski in South Bend, Indiana on Sept. 14, 1955. She was one of seven children.
She earned her bachelor’s in Spanish and Portuguese from Indiana University — and impressed visiting leaders with her fluency in both languages through her career in Miami. She also got her masters in public administration.
Meeting her husband
Both she and her husband moved to Miami in 1979 — she from Indiana, he from Tampa — but they would meet a handful of years later at a University of Miami-University of Maine Black Bears baseball game at UM.
“She was there on a date with somebody and I was there with some buddies,” Neil Robertson recalled. “I went over to say hello because my buddies all worked for the county and I came back and sat down and said, ‘What’s her phone number?’ They gave me her last four digits and thought it was funny I didn’t know that everyone in the county had the same first three digits.
“I was a lawyer downtown and I’d ride the elevator up to the 21st floor and flirt with Alyce and she’d tell me ‘I have lunch plans’ and I’d be back two days later and go through the same dance again. She’d broken up with the guy and was not in the mood to be with anyone else at time. I’d moved on to someone else. She was escorted to a wedding by my roommate at the time and she said at this wedding, ‘I’m going to marry Neil.’ And my buddy Bill said, ‘No, he’s going to marry the redheaded court reporter.’ And Alyce said, ‘No. He’s not.’ She was right. She knew better than I did. That’s just who she was. Once she decided something she was full steam ahead.”
They married in 1986 and celebrated 35 years together.
A changing Miami
“Though I had never been [to Miami] before, I thought of it as a retirement village,” Robertson told the Herald about starting her career in South Florida. “Boy was I wrong. I moved here less than a year before the McDuffie riots and the Mariel Boat Lift. Downtown Miami had the courthouse and the Freedom Tower for tall buildings, no Metrorail or Metromover, and County Hall was yet to be constructed. The ethnic strife in the community was awful. The cocaine problem led to many drug-related deaths. My Hoosier relatives wondered why I stayed. Fortunately, we have come a long way since those days.”
By 2012 — four years into Robertson’s tenure with the DDA — the Herald reported that since those tumultuous days that fueled five seasons of “Miami Vice” and countless doom-laden headlines nationwide, banks, law firms and international offices had moved into nearly 100 towers.
By the time Robertson stepped down from her position as the DDA’s executive director in 2019 for health reasons, the population in the area she championed had grown from 31,000 in 2008, when she joined the DDA, to more than 100,000 today, Schwartz said.
“So that’s three times the population growth. When Alyce came on we really didn’t have much arts and culture and the PAMM wasn’t in existence and Frost Science wasn’t in existence and the Arsht had just opened up and it was failing,” Schwartz said.
The DDA was also a decade in disarray when she joined, “riddled in fraud and mismanagement,” Schwartz opined.
She turned it around, he said, and the struggling institutions gained strength and new attractions to hold in the city’s urban core.
“By promoting downtown and driving investments here and people here all those institutions came to life and became key amenities for driving people and business downtown. She really focused on getting support for arts and culture,” Schwartz said.
In addition, Robertson advocated for public green spaces like Bay Walk.
“We have this beautiful downtown on the waterway. How many cities in the country can boast of a beautiful downtown on the water? And Alyce saw the value in that,” Schwartz said. “She didn’t come in and create, but she understood the amenities we had and marketed around that. And that was part of her brilliance. She brought that old Midwestern toughness. Very genuine, very honest. There was no BS with Alyce.”
Her humane approach
So while Robertson was a vocal proponent for the high-profile construction of the Port of Miami Tunnel and oversaw nearly $10 million in beautification efforts to improve sidewalks, lighting and landscape around the district, she also took a humane approach to addressing the homeless and their needs through her support of shelters like Camillus House and Lotus House.
That’s an aspect her friend, Miami Beach City Manager Alina Hudak hopes doesn’t get overlooked when Robertson’s notable career accomplishments are celebrated.
“Alyce was my very first friend in County Hall 37 years ago when I was fresh out of college,” Hudak said as she stressed the warmth Robertson exuded as a person. “Her many professional accomplishments will be recognized but she was a person who just welcomed others with open arms.
“Here I was, a stranger fresh out of school. She was from Indiana. I was a Cuban refugee from the humblest roots in Miami and we became the best of friends. We shared all of our life moments together,” Hudak said. “I hope she’s always remembered for her incredible heart and the incredible love she had for her family and for the community and the county she gave 30-plus years to and, obviously her role as DDA director and her love for Downtown Miami. She had a love for life and for people — for people of all walks of life.”
Meeting the Pope
Former Miami Herald reporter Gail Meadows became a life-long friend after buying a house in Miami’s Morningside neighborhood. That’s where she met the Robertsons.
Robertson was known in her neighborhood for celebrating her Polish heritage by hosting an annual Dyngus Day celebration, in the Polish tradition of South Bend, on the day after Easter, Meadows recalled.
“Alyce — 100% Polish — had her parents’ (maybe grandparents’) vintage sausage grinder and would crank out 60 pounds of fresh sausage from Laurenzo’s in North Miami Beach in preparation for the day. Neighbors even helped build a dance floor for the yard, and musicians would play polkas as Neil and Alyce — in Polish costume years ago — would dance,” Meadows said.
Robertson could charm visiting dignitaries, too, as she did when Pope John Paul II, the Polish pope, visited Miami in 1987 and spent the night at the home of Miami Archbishop Edward McCarthy in Morningside. The Robertsons and Meadows were among the guests the archbishop had invited to be present as the motorcade arrived. “As the pontiff made his way to the front door, Alyce put out her hand and said, ‘Witamy’ — welcome, in Polish.) He got it and acknowledged her greeting.”
Robertson also came up with a T-shirt idea for Morningside emblazoned with the lettering, “The Pope Slept Here.” “We ordered dozens,” Meadows exclaimed. Still has them, 34 years later.
Mentoring people
A day after losing his life partner of more than 35 years, Robertson’s husband Neil takes stock.
“One of the things that moved me the most during this whole process was the notes I got from people she mentored,” he said. “Women who had written to her that said she had taught them how to be a professional woman and make it work.” Someone who was homeless told him how Robertson helped him find a job which led to a home and a family.
“So many reached out to me to say, ‘Alyce introduced me to my spouse. Alyce introduced me on how to move forward in my career.”
The Robertsons made a special team.
“When our first daughter was born Alyce thought about staying home and being a stay-at-home mom,” her husband said. “I told her you will be bored in no time and your career is important and you’d be an inspiration to your daughter by being successful in your career. I was right. And she acknowledged later that she had made the right decision.”
Survivors, services
In addition to her husband, Robertson’s survivors include their children Anne Marie and Katherine; also, her three sisters and three brothers. She was predeceased by her parents.
Visitation is at 6 p.m.-8 p.m. Wednesday, June 23, at St. Rose of Lima Catholic Parish, 415 NE 105th St., in Miami Shores. The funeral will be at 11 a.m. Thursday, June 24 at St. Rose of Lima.
This story was originally published June 19, 2021 at 4:52 PM.
