CHAPTER 6:
“LIKE LIGHTING A MATCH”
Strong relationships with staff and clients were always the bedrock of the Kleinberg business and continued to be as the firm expanded. Whether with developers, landlords, brokers or design clients, MKDA relationships last for decades. As companies grew, acquired other companies or otherwise changed, they came back to MKDA to design for the new entity. “We have always been relationship people and that is how we have developed the business historically,” Michael explains. “We have always been tight with the commercial real estate community of brokers and consultants, and as we developed closer relationships with them over the years, they MKDA designed Polygram Records’ would refer us to tenants 10 floors of offices in Worldwide Plaza, above, designed by SOM and in the industry.” opened in 1989. 50
M I LO K L E I N B E R G A N D M K DA : S I X D E C A D E S I N D E S I G N
The commission to design headquarters for Polygram Records was one of those referrals. According to Michael, it came from a contact MKDA made years earlier with a brokerage called Williams Real Estate. Sometime in the 1980s, when Polygram decided to consolidate its multi-label operation under one roof, Williams recommended MKDA to design the space. High-profile music labels included icons like Deutsche Grammophon, Island, Decca, London and Mercury, among others, each of which would have its own floor. Eventually, Polygram had about 10 floors, each measuring 30,000 square feet, in the new, SOMdesigned Worldwide Plaza complex, completed by Zeckendorf Development in 1989. Often, the Kleinbergs were in the right place at just the right time with the right idea, like developing small space programs and pre-builts in the ’80s and ’90s, when buildings were getting bigger than they’d ever been. “We came up with the creative ideas for positioning a
