Just about everything Philip Klutznick has done in his 77 years seems to be upper case. He has been Secretary of Commerce under Jimmy Carter, Ambassador to the United Nations` Economic and Social Council under President Kennedy, Federal Housing Commissioner under FDR, President-emeritus of the World Jewish Congress and Honorary President of B`nai B`rith International. And that`s just the beginning. It takes about four pages to list all the titles Klutznick has held or currently holds. Among those is: The Man Who Built Park Forest.
Now, when most men hsi age are in sunnier climes playing golf and gin rummy, Klutznick remains in Chicago, the city where he made his mark and his fortune. And he shows no sign of slowing down.
Klutznick rises by 5 each morning in his 72d-floor Water Tower Place condominium. Because he conceived and built the trend-setting high-rise, he calls this ”living over the store.” His morning exercise regimen includes jogging inside his spacious apartment and swimming a few laps at a nearby pool. Then it`s breakfast, and by 7 a.m. he`s in his office at the John Hancock Center.
His days are filled with speaking engagements, marathon phone conversations about the Middle East, Jewish affairs, philanthropy, politics and with answering the mail. As chairman of its executive committee, he is playing a key role in the $250 million Dearborn Park project. He spends a good deal of time on the Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture in New York. He doesn`t like his name draped around public buildings or institutions, but there is a Klutznick Museum at B`nai B`rith International Headquarters in Washington. ”I am more and more into museums,” Klutznick says. ”We underestimate the importance of the past to the present.”
As to business matters, ”I give (them) little attention,” he says.
”Sammy (his youngest son) takes care of the day-to-day affairs. I provided for my children and grandchildren, so why in hell should I worry about my business?”
Why indeed? Klutznick has long since sold his principal holdings, and his personal fortune is estimated at $25 million.
Now he concentrates on politics and philanthropy. And in both he has an annoying habit of breaking ranks, thinking–and speaking out–for what he believes.
”He is considered by many to be the leading Jew in the U.S.,” says Rabbi Seymour Siegel, director of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council. But Klutznick is also considered to be something of a pariah by some mainstream Jewish organizations. His transgressions include arguing that the Palestine Liberation Organization should be brought into the peace process, that Israel is better served today by exercising its talents in diplomacy rather than war, and for insisting that American Jews not only have a right but a duty to speak up on the Middle East–including criticism of Israel.
For his trouble, Klutznick has recently developed an ulcer. ”And this is a man,” says his son Tom, ”who always said he gives ulcers and doesn`t get them.”
Klutznick feigns indifference to the harsh criticism. ”I knew what I was getting into when I went public,” he says. ”I`ve lived through this kind of thing since I was born. When a kid called me a sheeny, I got mad as hell. Nowadays, when I get a nasty letter, I answer it even if I don`t know the person.”
”We know what`s in those letters,” his wife, Ethel, says, ”and it hurts him for a minute, like a pinch. But he doesn`t complain. In all these years, Phil never brought his problems home. He handles them himself. If he wants to tell me, he will.”
There was a time, however, when he brought his home to his problems.
In 1946 Philip Klutznick had a wife, three children and a choice. He had been offered a position in New York ”for four times what I had made in Omaha.” But he came to Chicago instead. ”I decided on Chicago because I had been here before and knew housing needed doing,” says Klutznick. ”I liked Chicago`s robustness and not being oversophisticated. It was close to my tempo. It was also close to my wife`s family in Omaha and a remnant of mine in Kansas City.”
Klutznick and his fellow developers incorporated as American Community Builders and bought 2,400 acres of cornfield 27 miles south of Chicago. The plan was first to build clusters of apartments for rent and later ranch-style homes for sale around a central shopping center. The rental units were a bargain for thousands of World War II veterans who returned to find a severe housing shortage and sky-high rents. Klutznick`s group made modest profits from the housing but did extraordinarily well from water sales and its cut of shopping-center sales.
At one point, Klutznick moved his own family to Park Forest ”because I felt I had to be on the job.” One result was that he heard directly from tenants who were less than satisfied with him. These tenants were not shy about expressing their displeasure in front of the Klutznick children, and one memorable night they even formed a chanting picket line outside his house. Klutznick`s son Tom remembers that growing up in Park Forest was ”sensational . . . because we were up to our a– in mud. Everybody learned to live together successfully. I went to the first high school, and it went to the state basketball tourney, and our choir made the `Ed Sullivan Show.` ”
However, the elder Klutznick says: ”Living there was a big mistake for me. We had plenty of problems–mud streets, unfinished work, tenants renting before the plaster was on. It was day and night work, and then we got hit with something we hadn`t experienced–inflation. It almost broke us.”
But not quite. One of the things he did right, he says, was allowing the tenants the right to govern themselves. It was a wise move, according to William H. Whyte Jr., who chronicled the lives of Park Forest`s 26,222 inhabitants in ”The Organization Man,” because it made the residents feel they had a stake in the community.
Still, the sight of Klutznick piloting his Cadillac through troubled stretches of the town often caused resentment to swell in the issues-oriented inhabitants, many of whom were University of Chicago faculty, young professionals and executives on the rise. ”It`s easier to look back at those years than it was to live them,” Klutznick says. ”Everywhere I go in the world, I run into successful people who had lived in Park Forest. There`s James Dutt, the chairman of Beatrice Foods, and H. Laurance Fuller, president of Standard Oil of Indiana.”
Ethel Klutznick says her husband of 54 years has two very important traits: a sense of humor and a long fuse. ”He never gets blue. Phil never despairs and . . . he keeps busy. When a man loses interest in life, he deteriorates. Phil is interested in everything.”
In 1951 Klutznick`s interest in shopping malls coincided with that of Marshall Field & Company. Field`s president then, James Palmer, took realtor Ferd Kramer`s advice not to build, and thus not become a landlord to competitors, but instead to find a developer–namely, Klutznick. Old Orchard in Skokie was the result. After that, Klutznick joined Sears, Roebuck & Co. to construct other successful shopping centers such as Oakbrook and River Oaks.
Klutznick`s success with Marshall Field led to the building of Water Tower Place, a $180 million, 74-story amalgamation of stores, shops, offices, apartments, theaters and the Ritz-Carlton Hotel. ”I got a call one day from a man named John Moore, who told me Phil had signed a $10 million contract to start Water Tower Place,” recalls Newton Minow, Klutznick`s attorney. ”He told me Phil had written a four-line agreement on an envelope and signed it. Moore sent a photostat. When I saw it, I knew it was Phil`s signature, so I called him in New York, where he was in a meeting.
”Phil said, `I meant to tell you, Newt, but I didn`t want the deal to evaporate.` I told him that wasn`t the way we wrote contracts today, but it was binding. And that`s how Water Tower Place was bought.”
Klutznick`s firm, Urban Investment and Development Co., was sold to Aetna Life & Casualty Co. in 1970, and in 1984 was bought by JMB Realty Corp. of Chicago. But Klutznick didn`t retire. He plunged into other projects, the most notable being Dearborn Park, begun in January of 1974. The plan is to complete a 3,000-unit, $250 million complex of middle-income housing on a 51-acre site in the South Loop near the historic Dearborn Station.
”We are doing inner-city development–the big push of the `80s–and this is the start,” Klutznick said at the time. Recently, he explained how he and the other developers got the Dearborn Park project moving. ”We went to see Mayor Daley,” Klutznick recalls. ”It was John Perkins, president of Continental Illinois National Bank; Thomas Ayers, the retired chairman of Commonwealth Edison; and myself. Daley just asked, `What do you need?` and I told him an agreement for the land. He called in a city official and told him, `I don`t want anything put in their way, all right?` Then he told us that if we had any trouble, come right back and see him. There was no delay in working with Daley. We had to renegotiate with the city, but it took 60 minutes and a handshake with him, instead of six months with someone else.”
Phil Klutznick, despite his worldwide travels and reputation, is a man of the Midwest. He was born in Kansas City on July 9, 1907. His father, a Polish cobbler, had arrived in this country in 1901. His mother, also Polish-born, indulged her son. ”I grew up as a fat kid who liked to read and eat–a teacher`s pet. I liked older people and couldn`t wait until I was 50 years old.”
