South Florida Business Journal | ‘Queen of Brickell’ Alicia Cervera Sr. transforms Miami real estate (Video)

The year was 1966.

Alicia Cervera Sr. had arrived in Miami from Cuba with her husband, Javier, and their two young daughters six years prior. Cervera happened to read an article about the residential stretch called Brickell Avenue changing from single-family lots to multifamily development.

The Cerveras wanted in.

Cervera was no stranger to real estate. In her native Peru, her mother bought and flipped homes – more than 20, she recalled – often with young Alicia learning at her side. So she asked a Miami Realtor to find her a Brickell property to buy. The asking price: $90,000.

“I almost fainted,” she said. “That didn’t stop me.”

They needed 10% for a down payment, but had only $200 in the bank, she recalled. So, she called her father, a diplomat and developer in Peru, and even asked her maid for help. In the end, Cervera, who at the time was pregnant with her third child, scraped together about $5,000. They closed the deal, rezoned the sites for multifamily and, within a few years, resold them. What did her first deal land her?

“Less than a million,” she said with a chuckle.

The deal became the launch pad for a remarkable real estate career that changed an entire region.

Considered by some as the “queen of Brickell,” Cervera – and Cervera Real Estate, the company she founded – sold hundreds of thousands of units for a reported $6.5 billion and helped put Miami on the global map. Her work has created new communities, revived others, and earned the respect of peers. In 2022, Miami-Dade County designated a stretch of South Miami Avenue as Alicia Cervera Way.

“Thank you for your grit and vision; you have most definitely left your mark in this city for generations to come,” Commissioner Eileen Higgins said at the unveiling of the street signs. “You have defied the odds: as a woman, an immigrant and an entrepreneur.”

For her impact on the market and community, the South Florida Business Journal is recognizing Alicia Cervera Sr. with the 2023 Business of the Year Lifetime Achievement Award.

Cervera, now 93, is the “grand lady of real estate sales,” said Related Group Chairman and CEO Jorge Pérez, who has worked with her for decades and credited her with seeing what Miami had to offer to buyers from the U.S., Latin America and around the world. She was “instrumental in developing that market for the early condo developers like ourselves,” he told the Business Journal.

Today, with daughters Veronica Cervera Goeseke and Alicia Cervera Lamadrid at the helm, the firm’s accolades include being the only brokerage to sell out more than 100 condominiums in South Florida.

The work started in earnest with a single deal.

In 1979, Cervera approached New York real estate developer Harry Helmsley about exclusively representing his planned 254-unit Palace on Brickell. Cervera revamped what had been the traditional approach to representation. Instead of just being a lone person in the sales office, she became involved in everything, including meetings with the architect, contractor and marketing teams.

A year later, Veronica and Alicia Jr. joined her. Their approach transformed Cervera Real Estate into a full-service firm, handling residential and commercial sales, property rentals and management, and project consulting.

It was Cervera’s international pedigree that informed her approach. Her father, who was Peru’s ambassador to the United Nations and Cuba, taught his daughter how to treat people from different countries, she recalled.

Her new city, Miami, wasn’t yet an international destination. But she saw promise – for international buyers, and for submarkets well beyond Brickell and the central business district.

Cervera has worked with developers to transform both the city of Miami and the region as a whole. She and Pérez turned Miami Beach’s “South of Fifth” district into one of the most affluent ZIP codes in the country. Her work with such developers – 85, by some estimates – remade areas including downtown, Brickell, Coconut Grove and Edgewater.

She was also a mentor of sorts. From her, a young David Martin, now CEO of Terra Group, learned about real estate sales, working with different cultures, and “how you frame a decision completely differently by the international clientele you’re serving,” he said.

Martin struck his first deals with her firm while in his mid-20s. Their work on Metropolis in downtown Kendall redefined the concept of an urban market in a suburban community.

“Alicia defined this residential offering that said quality of life and amazing urban living is something you want to be part of,” he said.

Her arrival from Cuba brought a “clear vision” unblemished by preconceived notions or expectations, she said. With that clean slate, she – and later her daughters – worked with developers, architects and others to create a city that became known for its global architecture, a rich professional market, and every major American sport, said Cervera, who admitted she’s “crazy about sports.”

It lured global buyers and an influx from New York, the level of which was a nice surprise, she said. “I always thought of Miami as the little sister of New York. Now, New York is a complement of Miami.”

With her firm’s future in place, Cervera sees herself as a counselor to her daughters and a role model to other women. Cervera is proud of the role she’s played. She’s earned respect for herself and other women from men in the male-dominated industry.

With the loss three years ago of Javier, to whom she was married for 66 years, family has never been more important to Cervera. Each week, she dines with her daughters, and each Friday, son Javier Jr., a real estate developer and CEO of Cervera Real Estate Ventures, sends her flowers – just as he’s done for almost a decade.

“I had a vision of Miami,” recalled Cervera, who watched as the “sleepy town” she arrived to grew to global status – and skyrocketing property values. “They received us here with open arms. Miami inspired me so much when I arrived here.”