Sand and sun add up to a vacation for most people. But these alumni mayors have had to weather challenges in Florida to stimulate growth and reinvent themselves

Like many retirees, Norman Edelcup '57 looked forward to getting more involved in his community.

He'd been a resident of the south Florida town Sunny Isles Beach for more than 30 years, having taken up residence there in the late 1960s, when the community had been famous for its string of two-story beachfront motels. Frequented by the likes of Gary Cooper and Frank Sinatra, Sunny Isles Beach had once cultivated a reputation as the Florida Riviera.

"All the movie stars visited here," Edelcup recalls. "Grace Kelly, America's only princess, even spent a night at the Golden Strand. It was quite a glamorous place in its heyday."

But by the 1970s, the town's allure had been eclipsed by Orlando and Disney World, and Sunny Isles Beach had fallen into decline. While its once-famed strip still evoked the Rat Pack era, the town had become better known for its $39 motel rooms than as a place to rub shoulders with the glitterati. 

Edelcup had long thought the tired old beach town could use a jolt. By the late 1990s he was winding down a career in finance, during which he had held senior executive positions at Keller Industries, Avatar Holdings, National Banking Corp. and Confidata Corp. Most recently he had been chairman and then owner of Item Processing of America, finally selling the company in 1998.

Fewer hours at the office meant more time to participate in the civic affairs of Sunny Isles Beach, itself on the verge of a metamorphosis.  "I decided I didn't want to retire; I realized I needed to keep myself active," Edelcup says. "I had these skills in corporate management and finance, and I thought I could apply them to government."

His timing proved a boon not just for Edelcup but also for Sunny Isles Beach. Two years earlier, the 15,000 residents of the unincorporated area had voted to declare the two-square-mile community a city. Edelcup had served on the committee overseeing the incorporation, aware that such a move would herald big changes for the locale.

A few developers had ventured into the town since the mid-1980s, tearing down a couple of the old motels and erecting high-rise condominiums in their place, which were quickly snapped up. Edelcup and the other city founders began to picture a modern, affluent beachfront community, lined with high-end residential towers.

"We were an old resort town, an elderly retirement area," Edelcup says. "We decided to reinvent ourselves and choose a new destiny."

Wanting to get more involved in the city's future, Edelcup ran for and won a seat on the Sunny Isles Beach board in 2001. By 2002 he was serving as vice mayor to the founding mayor, David Samson. When Samson died in 2003, Edelcup inherited his post. He found himself at the helm of the most complex enterprise he had ever managed: a community in the throes of rebirth.

By then the reinvention was well under way. Many of the 80-plus beachfront motels had already come down; in their stead rose more than a dozen 40- and 50-story condominium towers housing a younger, more cosmopolitan population.

The city zoning codes had been rewritten to allow buildings of up to 55 stories, higher than anywhere else on the beach in south Florida. But Edelcup and other city planners knew the key to the town's allure would be its airy feel and ocean view. So they had stipulated that the buildings be relatively thin, with stretches of beach between them. The result: a dazzling row of oceanfront towers that preserves a sense of open space.

The town has been profiled in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times and other major media. It has even appeared in overseas publications, attracting thousands of Latin Americans and Europeans who now live there part time. The population has grown from 15,000 to 17,000, and is expected to reach 25,000 within the next few years. Most impressively, the tax base has soared from $1.3 billion a decade ago to more than $4 billion today.

Among the many developers pouring millions into Sunny Isles Beach is Donald Trump, who is set to open a condo complex of nearly 1,000 units later this year. "I have always loved the location," Trump has said, "and over the past few years it's become the hottest place in Florida."

Edelcup now spends his days in a flurry of activity. There is much to be done as Sunny Isles Beach grows, from overseeing the demolition of the old motels to approving plans for new projects to developing parks and infrastructure. The city is creating a town center, a four-block hub of shops and offices around which the community will circulate. And plans are underway to build a public school to educate the 1,500 children who now call Sunny Isles Beach home.

"I love it," Edelcup says. "I thought this would be a part-time endeavor, but I find I'm spending 40-hour weeks here. Fifteen or 20 years from now, this will probably be more of a caretaking job. But this is the time to implant your vision. This is the best time to be here."

The residents seem to approve. Last year, the Kellogg alum ran unopposed for his first full term as mayor. "I suppose that's an indication that the public is satisfied," he says with a laugh. 

Edelcup has found some unexpected camaraderie from a Kellogg colleague who has also helped to change the fate of a Florida town. Malcolm Fromberg '56, whom Edelcup remembered from classes at Kellogg, was mayor of Miami Beach in the early 1980s. The two see each other frequently at civic events and often compare notes on the challenges of running a city.

Fromberg's stint as mayor marked the beginning of a turnaround for Miami Beach, which had been in steep decline when he came to office in 1981. "The appraised value of property was going down. We hadn't had any construction in 10 years," recalls Fromberg, a Miami Beach attorney. "The banks weren't lending any money. At that point it was a depressed community, though now it's hard to believe."

Within four years, Fromberg had overseen the construction of a new police station, the doubling of the city's convention center, the renovation of the Theatre of the Performing Arts, and the birth of the Miami Beach boardwalk. At the same time, he worked to preserve the city's Art Deco heritage, which has become a hallmark of the now-thriving town.

"Everything I learned at Kellogg was put to use," Fromberg says. "I was making presentations, meeting with developers, giving out multimillion-dollar contracts. We put together a real development team and started moving the community forward. And we had to do all that with a declining economic base."

The two are often joined by a third Northwestern alum, Neisen Kasdin, who earned his undergraduate degree in 1976 and served as mayor of Miami Beach from 1997 to 2001. "We've all run into similar issues with development, amenities and local politics, and how to balance the desires of all the constituencies," Edelcup says.

Kasdin holds his two Kellogg friends in high regard. He credits Fromberg for his ability to lead Miami Beach when it was a much "tougher" city and praises Edelcup for managing Sunny Isles Beach "like a business."

"Knowing that they both went to Kellogg helps explain why they are so good at what they do," Kasdin adds.

Edelcup says he never anticipated that he would end up working in government.

 "But it proves you can take what you've learned in business and business school and apply it all toward running a new city," he says. "I have no doubt that the education and skills I gained at Northwestern have more than paid off — both for me and for my community."