A fierce advocate for trees, history and community, Nelson’s passion for preservation has left an indelible mark on Grove landscape.
Editor’s Note: As part of an ongoing series called Village People, the Spotlight is profiling a mix of interesting people and personalities who live and work in Coconut Grove. If you know of someone we should profile, drop us a note at [email protected].
After decades of paying close attention to the world around her, there are certain trees and canopied streets in Coconut Grove that activist Joyce Nelson knows like old friends.
Often she knows them because she fought to preserve them.
The spreading banyan by Grovenor House on South Bayshore Drive, for example, and the live oak in the parking lot of the CVS on Grand Avenue – both at one time slated for removal. Or the royal palm that her father gave her as a sapling and stands today at the corner of Day Avenue and Virginia Avenue as a sturdy tribute to the tree itself and the tenacity of the woman who planted it.
“I just did what needed to be done,” Nelson said recently from her shady longtime home in the North Grove. “I wanted to save the feel of where we live. I wanted people to know: This is different. This is the Grove. Period.”
In a community acclaimed for its sub-tropical vibe, few have worked harder to preserve that verdant character than Nelson. When she heard about a developer or even a homeowner ready to fire up a bulldozer or a chainsaw, Nelson often leapt into action.
One of the first – and perhaps most memorable of her battles – took place in 1993 when Nelson and other members of the Coconut Grove Civic Club caught wind of the city’s plan to demolish five 1930s-era aircraft hangars adjacent to the Pan American Terminal Building on Dinner Key, now used as City Hall.
Running into the city commission chambers, Nelson declared, “Over my dead body.” City officials shelved their plans and promised to locate funds to restore and repurpose the buildings, and that declaration became her motto, a cri de coeur she sounded over and over again in the cause of preservation.
Saved from the wrecking ball, those iconic hangars were later granted protections under state historic preservation laws. The structures remain in use today: three to house recreational boats, another as an event space and one as The Fresh Market grocery store at 2640 South Bayshore Drive.
From there Nelson went on to become what veteran magazine publisher and civic player who Elena Carpenter calls “a gentle giant, a Grove matriarch, her compass finely tuned. She can smell a threat to the Grove a mile away.”
Nelson’s civic involvement includes stints on the Coconut Grove Village Council, and leadership roles with the Coconut Grove Park Homeowners Association and the Woman’s Club of Coconut Grove, among others. She remains president of the Coconut Grove Civic Club, the group behind many of the community’s fiercest preservation battles.
In 1999 she co-founded Grove Tree-Man Trust, a nonprofit advocacy group promoting policies aimed at building tree canopy. While the trust is no longer active, its legacy endures. The City of Miami’s Tree Trust Fund grew out of conversations with Nelson and other group members who proposed setting aside tree-removal fines and permitting fees to fund new tree plantings.
Nelson was also behind the placement, in 2016, of eight historic markers throughout the village. Working through the Civic Club she petitioned the state’s Division of Historical Resources Coconut for the sites’ recognition and raised funds for the production and installation of the markers.
Veteran land-use attorney Tucker Gibbs – no stranger to development battles throughout South Florida – calls Nelson “the quintessential Grovite – the person who personifies all the good things the people of the Grove aspire to. She is not someone who sat around; she was down in the trenches, lobbying commissioners, attending meetings. If you want to know about something in the Grove, she knows it.”
Born in Philadelphia, Nelson moved to Hollywood at the age of seven, and to Coconut Grove in 1974. While keeping an increasingly-busy schedule of civic activism, Nelson also pursued interests in fashion and jewelry making, even as she worked full-time in the advertising department of Bell South. She retired from the company in 2005 after a 20-year career.
At her side during nearly all of her community work has been Ron Nelson, her husband of more than 30 years and, at present, an administrator with Miami-Dade County.
Driven by Joyce’s passion for the natural world, the Nelsons have been inveterate travelers, visiting Africa four times to go on safaris within remote back-country locations to see big cats, elephants and other wildlife.
Recently slowed by neuromuscular neuropathy, Joyce Nelson now uses a wheelchair to get around. But she is far from finished. This month she volunteered to pitch in on a Woman’s Club project focusing on the history of Coconut Grove women. “It is amazing how much volunteer time and effort she’s put into [the Grove],” says Andy Parrish, a developer of single-family homes and vice chair of Miami’s Planning, Zoning and Appeals Board. “Whatever she decides to do, she follows through. She shows up. Fearless. Remarkable.”
