Ian Michael Klein, Rabina’s Development Head, Wanted to Be ‘a Real Estate Guy’

When Ian Michael Klein, head of development and construction at Rabina, told his dad — a commercial real estate broker — that he wanted to go into architecture, his dad didn’t really see the draw. To the elder Klein, architecture was all about square feet, but to the son it was so much more. 

Klein, 43, graduated from Cornell University in 2005 with a degree in architecture and an intent to get into development, and what he admits was a somewhat naive idea of how to get that done.   

“I tried to get a job in real estate development, but nobody would hire me,” he said. “I would approach developers and they’d say, ‘Well, you’re an architect’ and I’d say, ‘No, I’m a real estate guy,’ and they’d say, ‘This piece of paper says you’re an architect.’ So it took me a minute to get into development.”

Eventually, Klein found a job working for a small architect who had a real estate development practice and who mentored him about the real estate side of things to help facilitate that transition. 

Fast forward to 2010 — the year Klein earned a master’s in architecture and urban design at Harvard — and he is a senior project manager at the New York City Economic Development Corporation (NYCEDC) during the Bloomberg administration. There he was part of a team that was structuring all of the public-private transactions throughout the city, helping the administration decide what can and should be built in certain areas, and finding developers to get the job done. 

While with the NYCEDC, Klein worked on some massive projects. Those included a new office building for the United Nations that his team created by restructuring the body’s leases on city-owned property, the transformation of the area next to Citi Field in Willets Point, and even the relocation of the Fulton Fish Market from Lower Manhattan to Hunts Point in the Bronx. 

“I’m a born and bred New Yorker, so it was a very New York job,” Klein said of his time at the NYCEDC. “I think 80 percent of the folks on our team were born and bred New Yorkers. You’re working on these large-scale transformative projects in the city you grew up in, and all of them, by definition, are really complex transactions because everything the city touches is complex and of scale.”

Then, in 2012, it was time to go work for the legendary Harry Macklowe at Macklowe Properties. That was an opportunity Klein grabbed with both hands and ran with. Not only did he have the chance to learn from Macklowe, a prolific developer, he also got to stand out on his own. 

While the core team at Macklowe was working on the ultra-luxury residential tower at 432 Park Avenue on Billionaires’ Row, Klein was working on everything else. 

“I came there not actually to work on 432 Park, but to work on literally everything but 432 Park,” he said. “It’s funny because the role I had there was very, as they say ‘in the dirt.’ I was running projects from the field side and on the implementation side. It ended up being amazing. That shop has a tremendous ethos and work ethic, and a commitment to quality and process, and Harry’s just incredibly smart.” 

Two projects that Klein worked on at Macklowe were condominium conversion projects — 737 Park Avenue and 150 East 72nd Street — which Klein described as “notoriously difficult” given that you are dealing with older, existing buildings and infrastructure, as well as tenancy issues. 

“It challenges you every day to react to new circumstances and new conditions,” Klein said. “You’re discovering things as you go, and you’re operating a building while you’re building a building. And you have to think about every single inch of space, unlike a new building where every single piece of structure is exactly where you want it to be.” 

The cost of conversion projects is another challenge. 

“When you do a condo conversion, you’re buying a very, very expensive piece of real estate, and you’re paying interest on the entirety on day one,” he said. “Normally, with a new construction project the land is not as expensive as the construction, so interest increases over the course of the build as you start to spend money on construction. With condo conversion, the land and existing building is usually far more expensive than the improvements, and you’re borrowing money against them from day one. So you have basically no pre-construction time, and it’s very expensive.”

If you don’t plan for the costs properly, he noted, then it can be a massive pitfall to your conversion project.  

Klein said the lessons he learned on those jobs as well as at Macklowe carried over to his position at Rabina, where he is responsible for all of the firm’s development activities and project execution. 

“Ian is an unusual package of talents,” said Mickey Rabina, founder and chairman of Rabina. “He has great design taste and vision, is detail-oriented, can actually manage the complexity of building a supertall, and has good business sense. Rarely have I seen such right- and left-brain talent in one person.”

Elisa Orlanski Ours, a friend and colleague of 13 years, recommended him for the Rabina position. Ours is the chief planning and design officer at Corcoran Sunshine Marketing Group. 

“I’ve known him across multiple chapters of his career, and he’s always stood out to me as someone who refuses to see development through just a single lens,” she said. “He’s an architect by training, but he thinks like a developer, he understands construction like a builder, he has this hospitality expertise, and he communicates design visions like a marketer. He’s the best of the best, and it’s a super important combination of skills.” 

One particular feather in Rabina’s cap is 520 Fifth Avenue, a recently completed 88-story, mixed-use supertall in Midtown Manhattan. 

The building offers both high-quality office space on the fourth to 28th floors, and luxury condo residences from the 42nd through 80th floors. The 88th floor features a residents-only amenity floor that includes a solarium with arched windows overlooking Central Park, a library with a view of the Empire State Building, private dining space and a game room.

Additionally, at the base of the building is Moss New York, a five-floor, members-only club for work, play and relaxation. 

“It’s a special place,” Ours said of the club. “Whenever people go, they run into someone they know or they meet someone new and have a meaningful exchange, and that is thanks to the whole Rabina team. But, in terms of Ian, it says a lot about the overall vision.” 

Rabina started designing 520 Fifth Avenue in 2020. Klein joined the firm in May of that year, having his initial interview in March 2020, just as the pandemic shut down the world. The firm broke ground in January 2022, the building opened in November 2025, and it was fully completed in August of this year. 

But Rabina isn’t solely focused on fancy offices and luxury condos. Affordable housing plays a role in the portfolio as well.

In March, Klein and his colleague, Sam Nidenberg, senior vice president at Rabina, got City Council approval to build what will become the second-tallest building in Brooklyn at 395 Flatbush Avenue. The building will have about 1,300 units with a percentage of those designated as affordable housing. The property is owned by the city and currently home to a mixed-use office and retail building.

“It’ll be the largest delivery of affordable housing within that community board within 10 years,” Klein said. “Affordable housing hits a whole range of New Yorkers … and the recent City of Yes legislation was designed to create these very large, mixed-
income rental buildings. The way the pencil condo towers defined the last generation of development, I think very large, mixed-income rental-oriented buildings will define the next generation of development.”

The last 12 months have been full of activity for Klein and Rabina with a variety of openings, groundbreakings and approvals. 

“It’s been a big year for us,” Klein said. “We have one unit left to sell at 393 West End. 520 Fifth got all six of its [temporary certificates of occupancy] within the last seven months, so that’s now a fully living and breathing building. We are 100 percent sold on those residences, and in May we broke ground on a Vancouver, Wash., project. We’re coming out of a year of a lot of things coming to a conclusion … [but] we’ve been setting the table for the next wave for the past two or three years, so it doesn’t necessarily feel like one thing starting and one thing ending. It’s more of a continuum of, you know, workflow.” 

Amanda Schiavo can be reached aschiavo@commercialobserver.com.