Renovation of 82 NE 40th Street, a retail building in Miami’s Design District. PHOTOGRAPH: Jarad Kleinberg.
same way Michael Kleinberg clicked almost instantly with Julia Lindh in Stamford. MKDA Miami opened in 2013 with Hertzler at the helm as executive managing director and director of design. Hertzler is an interior designer with a skill set that dovetailed perfectly with MKDA’s long history in corporate interiors, and that was the vein she intended to mine. In a complete reversal, however, MKDA Miami opened in a market with a great need for design of all kinds. It was as though the movers and shakers in the development world were waiting for MKDA to arrive. She knew she had to do a one-eighty to cater to players in the local market whose needs were elsewhere. “We knew we had to diversify,” she says. “We had to create a brand that would not only focus on the corporate sector that MKDA was known for, but also expand to the various sectors that Miami is known for: retail, hospitality and ground-up, mixed-use projects.” MKDA Miami was catapulted onto a trajectory no one anticipated. Since 2013, when Jeffrey and Michael opened the office, Hertzler has launched the firm’s first architecture studio and first hospitality studio, and ventured into mixed-use, high-rise, ground-up and retail projects. She has also expanded her sphere beyond Miami to include Fort Lauderdale, Coral Cables, Hialeah and the Caribbean, where MKDA Miami is refurbishing and repositioning a dated, 120,000-square-foot hotel A LWAY S A H E A D O F W H AT ’ S E M E R G I N G
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