A MAN FOR ALL SEASONS
As Miami has stumbled and fallen through rough growth spurts, and flown high through golden years, Bob Traurig has been there to lend a steadying hand
By: Charles Flowers, Special Correspondent
speechwrite@yahoo.com
IT'S OPENING DAY of the 2006 baseball season for the Florida Marlins, but Robert Traurig will miss it. Instead, he tells the story of another April day when he attended a game as a guest of then-owner Wayne Huizenga, before the first championship and the first notorious sell-off in 1997. Baseball fans surrounded Traurig, who has at least one thing in common with the Fort Lauderdale billionaire and it's not hair.
"They were saying, 'Come on! Give us your autograph. We know who you are!' " Traurig recalls, laughing. "No, they didn't." Finally, Huizenga appeared behind him like a bald eclipse, and teased Traurig the whole game long about the mistaken identity in the owner's skybox. Traurig returned to traveling incognito, a role he prefers.
"Traurig's a great guy," Huizenga says, "even if he doesn't look a thing like me. He's involved in all kinds of charitable organizations. He believes in giving back to the community."
Robert Traurig belongs to one of the most overlooked groups of Miami pioneers. No, it's not lawyers, although he co-founded Greenberg Traurig, LLP, a firm that has grown to an international force of 1,500 associates, and the eighth largest in the United States. Traurig is one of Miami's men and women who are still contributing into their eighth decade of life. At 80, he remains one of more than 100 lawyers in his firm who are ranked among the best in America.
"All you have to do is look at the skyline of Miami or at least the Brickell section. Bob had a part in all of it," says Lucia Dougherty, who was hired by Traurig and works in his firm as a land use attorney. "He worked for all the big developers
De- Bartolo, Margulies, you name it."
Traurig is a survivor. You can sense it in the way he shows up for work even though his 22nd floor Brickell Avenue office is still scaffolded to repair windows smashed by Hurricane Wilma; in the way he tosses aside his walker and strides purposefully to the end of a table with a view overlooking downtown Miami. He has advanced Parkinson's, but he is doing everything he can to stop the decline. The debilitating disease has ravaged his body for eight years now. For this keen observer of more than 65 years of Miami history, life has been a blessing and he wants to enjoy it as long as he can.
Traurig arrived here in 1939 as a teenager when Miami was just a small town, and he thought it was "the most beautiful place" he had ever seen. He still feels that way, despite changes that would make any head spin. A graduate of Miami High and the University of Miami School of Law, Traurig only left Miami to join the Navy during World War II and the Korean conflict.
Recognized as one of the most powerful people in Miami, Traurig played an instrumental role in the city's growth. Rapid land development, which his law firm helped to promote, required efforts to protect the inherent beauty of Miami- Dade as it grew to a metropolis of 2.5 million.
As contentious as opposing sides have been, Traurig has always been the calm at the center of controversial storms. He is known for his uncanny ability to deal with challenging issues, invariably achieving compromise and resolution.
"He has a compelling way of speaking," Dougherty says. "He's never disrespectful, even to somebody on the other side. He's a quintessential gentleman."
Two recent billion-dollar deals have far-reaching impacts for Miami, he notes. First was the $7.6 billion sale of Ivax Pharmaceuticals, a home-grown generic drug manufacturer, to Israel-based Teva Pharmaceuticals last July. A team of 15 Greenberg Traurig lawyers negotiated the acacquisition that Traurig calls "probably the largest single transaction that the firm has been involved in." More recently, McClatchy Newspapers struck a deal to buy Knight-Ridder Corp., parent of the Miami Herald, for $4.5 billion. The news rippled through Miami, and far beyond, to cities like Philadelphia; San Jose, Calif.; and Charlotte, N.C., where the once powerful Knight Ridder name will soon be just a memory. Meanwhile, McClatchy shuffles the deck, selling a dozen of the papers while keeping the Herald as it becomes the second biggest newspaper chain in the country, after Gannett. Traurig watches with interest.
"In my opinion the Herald will play a much smaller part in the decision making in South Florida than it ever has before," Traurig says, noting the major role the company and its executives played in charities and major civic projects including the Miami Performing Arts Center that was built partially on land donated by Knight Ridder. Luckily, he adds, the $2 billion Knight Foundation remains here to assist with Miami's ongoing need for philanthropy. Now that Dr. Phillip Frost, founder and CEO of Ivax, is a billionaire, he and his wife Nan's contributions will likely increase.
Never a litigator, Traurig grew his firm by helping business expand. Sometimes he played peacemaker. In the early 1990s, African-Americans had decided to boycott Miami-Dade, taking their convention business elsewhere after Nelson Mandela was slighted during a visit here. Traurig and other community leaders stepped in. He helped to find a compromise that worked to defuse what was becoming a tense, as well as costly, predicament.
"At that time I was chairman of the Greater Miami Chamber of Commerce and it was incumbent upon me to take a role and try to ameliorate the situation," he recalls, eager to spread the credit to other civic leaders like boycott leader H.T. Smith and former Knight Ridder Chairman Jim Batten. "They were all people of good will and so we worked it out."
He cites immigration as a force that has shaped Miami ethnically and established it as a center of Latin American business.
In April, Traurig received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Miami chapter of the National Conference for Community and Justice. He sees a place for law in the ongoing struggles between racial and ethnic groups, developers and environmentalists (his specialties are real estate and environmental law), and other natural adversaries.
"Law plays a very important part because the stability of the community is always at stake," he says.
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