Meet Chamber of Commerce Executive Director Althea Robinson
The Garden City Chamber of Commerce headquarters can make you feel at home almost instantly with its beige walls, comfortable chairs and carefully organized clutter. It doesn’t hurt that the building was once the home of a toll-keeper, located on the Long Island Motor Parkway; some staff offices are former bedrooms. Its kitchen feels warm with green accents and curtains with some sort of food pattern on them. You can forget you are standing in an office building until you see Althea Robinson, executive director of the Chamber. Dressed in a professional black-and-white shift dress with a perfectly styled blonde bob, she fills out paperwork on the green countertops, trying to squeeze in as much work as she can before her interview.
To say Robinson, who has worked for the Chamber for 35 years, is busy is an understatement. She keeps the hours of a business executive, coming in to the office at around 8:30 a.m. and usually leaving after 6 p.m. She brings work home with her and often works on weekends.
“There was a gentleman who had my job beforehand, and he only worked from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. three days a week, and I thought, ‘Wow, that would be great,’ Robinson said. “I worked seven days a week for at least two years…I just worked constantly because I didn’t want to let the Board down thinking I couldn’t do this.”
Robinson is above the usual age of retirement, but it is hard to tell by looking at her and hearing all she does for the Chamber. In her job with the Chamber, Robinson organizes all of the Chamber’s events and activities. She is in charge of public and community relations and writes and edits the Chamber’s publications, Business Bulletin Magazine and the former Guide & Calendar of Events. She has served on the Village Belmont Festival Committee for 14 years, was executive director of the Garden City Toll Lodge Preservation Association and is currently the executive director for the Garden City Chamber of Commerce Foundation. She also represents Garden City in the Nassau County Council of Chambers of Commerce.
“I always refer to her as the energizer bunny,” said John Wilton, chairman of the Garden City Merchant, Professional and Retailers Group.
Wilton, who has known Robinson for 25 years, said she effectively represents the Chamber to the village and acts as a “human rolodex” of information.
“She certainly could be a clown in any of the best circuses,” Wilton said. “She juggles so many items on a daily basis yet never drops a ball.”
In addition to her work with the Chamber, Robinson volunteers with the Garden City Historical Society, Twigs of Winthrop University Hospital and the Mineola-Garden City Rotary Club, for which she has co-edited its Services Guide for 22 years, served as publicity co-chairperson and was named Paul Harris Fellow twice. She also has served as treasurer and director of both the 10- and seven-member Nominating Committees for Garden City’s Eastern Property Owners Association.
Robinson has so many commitments that most people can’t even read them all. Yet Robinson manages each one with enthusiasm and perfectly manicured nails and always looks to do more.
“I see things and go, ‘I wish I could do this, but oh, I don’t have time, I don’t have time, I don’t have time,’” she said, pounding her fist on the table. “But I do have the energy and do the best I can with the hours that I have.”
She attributes her energy to good genes. She said she drinks coffee constantly throughout the day, but it is always decaf.
“I feel like I’m 25,” Robinson said as she answered questions in the Chamber’s basement conference room because her office was “too full of papers.”
Robinson has a young voice, and she said she is computer savvy to a degree and leaves her email open all day.
Garden City Over the Years
Robinson, who has worked with 17 different Chamber presidents, has lived in Garden City for most of her life and said it is a special place to live because it has been laid out according to its founders’ master plan.
In her time here, she has witnessed the village’s metamorphosis. She said she remembers when Franklin Avenue was considered the Fifth Avenue of Long Island; the Chamber even got the village to put street signs up that said so.
“Franklin Avenue used to be lined with all sorts of small shops and boutiques, and, of course, we had all of the major department stores because Garden City was the first suburb to which Manhattan and Brooklyn department store branches moved,” Robinson said, sitting with perfect posture and her ankles crossed.
But when the Roosevelt Field Mall opened off Old Country Road in Garden City, many of those stores closed and have gradually been replaced by restaurants, stock brokerage firms and banks, said Robinson, who received the Chamber of Commerce 1992 Community Achievement Award.
“Being with the chamber and growing up with all of those shops and boutiques, I mean, we who knew of them when they were here, obviously miss them,” Robinson said as her voice took a nostalgic tone.
But the Chamber is happy to have the new businesses and has worked to bring some small shops back through collaborating with the village to renovate Franklin Avenue and revitalize the town, she said.
Many other Chambers of Commerce look toward Garden City as a model, said Robinson, who was named Woman of the Year by the Zonta Club of Long Island.
“They kind of hold Garden City on a pedestal and say, ‘Well, if Garden City has done this, why can’t we do this?’” Robinson said.
Her Story
Robinson said some of her favorite memories are from when she went to Garden City High School, where she was a cheerleader. After graduating, she went to Endicott College in Massachusetts, where she majored in retail advertising and marketing and won their advertising award. She placed second in the nation in a college marketing contest by Gem Razors.
“They thought I was a man, and my maiden name was Franz, and they wrote, ‘Dear Mr. Franz, congratulations, you have won.’” Robinson recalls as her bright blue eyes, covered in hard contact lenses, become animated. “Oh my God, I couldn’t believe it, I was so proud of myself.”
After college, Robinson became a secretary and then an advertising copywriter at J. Walter Thompson in Manhattan. She met her husband when they both worked in Manhattan, even though they both attended Garden City High School. Robinson left her position at the advertising agency when she had her first child.
Robinson began working again when her youngest child was in Junior High, but this time as a writer for The Garden City News, for which she wrote features and a column and then as an assistant editor for the now defunct Garden City Leader.
“I always loved to write,” said Robinson, who was named Business Person of the Year by the Nassau County Council of Chambers of Commerce in 2005.
While at the Leader, Robinson, who said she has always loved fashion, created two fashion supplements. In the process of procuring advertisements for the supplements with the theme of song titles, Robinson got to know many of the business owners and managers, which she said prepared her to work for the Chamber.
In her time with the Chamber, its membership has tripled to become the largest community chamber on Long Island.
Robinson attributes her accomplishments to hard work. She created her own motto: “You do the darn bestest you can at everything you do and once you do that, there’s not a lot more you can do.”
And despite her long hours, Robinson, a self-proclaimed bagel addict, always eats dinner with her husband, Jack, a retired computer company employee. When her three kids were growing up, they always had family dinners every night by candlelight.
Robinson has eight grandchildren, and all of her children live in different states. In her little spare time, she visits her family and relaxes on the beach by her summer house out east.
As for retirement plans, Robinson does not have any.
“I always kid around and say I’ll probably die with my head on top of my papers at my desk,” she said, in a light tone. “I think sometimes in life, you go through different phases, and it’s been a long phase with the Chamber. But I feel like you usually get a signal that you’re going to turn another corner, but I just didn’t get that signal yet.”
