"you'd Be Surprised How Easy It Is To Succeed"

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Today, stepping inside the imposing gray Wolfberg/Alvarez office in suburban Miami is like stepping inside a refuge. Outside it is hot; a Jaguar and a Mercedes, the partners' cars, sit side by side in the parking lot, baking, while traffic rushes by on the busy suburban street. But behind the thick walls it is quiet and cool. A grainy black-and-white blowup of Frank Lloyd Wright hangs behind the receptionist, frozen in time over a wilting philodendron.

The building also bespeaks an uncertain time for its occupants. The computer blinks and hums away in the back room, but the corridors leading to it are dim, lights off and desks empty The display room for the models is an echoing cavern. Only two of the original six partners are left, facing each other through the glass walls of their main-floor offices. Alvarez sits beneath a framed letterhead from his grandfather's confiscated Havana business, poring over the daily expenses and the weekly invoice forms. Wolfberg still sells hard, but he, like Alvarez, also reads all the in-coming and out-going mail, and checks the weekly reports from the team leaders and the department heads.

Upstairs, away from the partners' closed offices, Wolfberg/Alvarez has changed as well. "It's important for us to be perceived as if we're still a big firm," says Wolfberg, but the large workroom feels deserted, with pockets of four or five men clustered in small groups rather than the mobs crowded together during the glory days. Nor do most of the employees sit with their teams any longer. With the staff cuts, quality had started to fall off; the firm was left with too few senior engineers and too many low-priced novices. So Wolfberg reinstituted departments, with department heads responsible for technical accuracy. "But that could change again tomorrow," Wolfberg says. If he has learned anything crisis by crisis, it is the importance of being flexible.

What hasn't changed is Wolfberg's energy, and his capacity to spin out strategies, plans, and dreams. No more buckshot marketing, he vows; no more "obsession with volume." Now he will concentrate on profit, aiming at high-payoff/low-labor projects in which his capital investment in computers can make a real difference. He also plans on expanding the services he can offer, just as he is already doing with Hematology & Oncology Associates. "I'm going to be out there offering design, construct, manage, furnish, finance, lease -- I'll do whatever you want," he spiels. "Once you get a client, why turn him over to someone else to make money?" Medplan, he is convinced, is one way to come back, to heal the scars of the struggle, selling busy doctors turnkey architecture. If that doesn't work there is Law-plan, or AEI CADD, his incorporated computer consulting business.

And if these plans don't fly there is Metro Support Services, which, Wolfberg reports, is "in high gear" for a joint venture with The Wackenhut Corp. to provide forensic hospitals for the public sector -- not just to design and build them, but to staff and run them as well, riding the coming wave of privatization.

The recession, Wolfberg claims, "may have been just what we needed." He feels smarter for the trial, and the business may be stronger because of it. Wolfberg/Alvarez shed 54% of its expenses while keeping 86% of its capacity. The $3-million Miami International Airport plant is back on the board, and for fiscal 1984 Wolfberg expects $5 million to $6 million in sales, with a modest profit. The pared-down staff, with most members in their late 20s to mid-30s, still racks up impressive numbers. Each professional turns out close to $70,000 in work a year, 75% higher than the industry average; team leaders still invoice and collect, with collections averaging 43 days, about half the time most A/E firms wait. "So I don't think we did anything wrong," Wolfberg says. "With our growth momentum we had always been at the limit. But we landed on our feet, so it wasn't a failure."

Even so, the staff is restless. Team leader Marcel Morlote, in his late 20s, dismisses Wolfberg's new promises as "pie in the sky," but adds, "I don't buy lottery tickets, either. I hope they do something in the immediate future, though, or they'll lose people. Most of the good talent here plans to leave and start their own firms anyway; we're all that kind of people."

"This is still a young firm," agrees Samuel Matthews, a project architect. "In older firms they already have practices for keeping people, but the partners are still struggling with that here. The only really important thing for morale, though, is the perception of where the company is going."

Wolfberg knows how they feel; he was young and impatient once, too. But he is a different man from the young idealist of 1976 or the go-go growth CEO of the early '80s. "Morale has always been bad," he says impatiently. "So what? In the growth period, people complained they were too busy. During the recession, it was no money. Now, it's 'What's my future?'

"I do talk pie in the sky, but my dream is their dream. The most important thing I have to offer is opportunity. I know that. And I know that when the opportunity is gone, I'm going to lose them.

"Let them go start their own firms," he scoffs. "There is a certain delusion about how easy it is to do what we've done. But I'm tired of hearing about the problems of the past. Let's get rid of that baggage. Let's look forward again."

And that, of course, is exactly what he is doing as he looks out the window of his airconditioned Mercedes at WAT's latest project, the ditch that will one day be doctors' offices. Viewing the site with the eyes not just of an architect but of a man who has learned a lot about business, he shows that his vision, at least, hasn't failed.

"This may look like it's just a hole in the ground," he insists, "But it's more, much more."

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