Looking to make librdkafka.a and librdkafka++.a in RHEL 7.4

[LouT117]

Downloaded librdkafka-master.zip for github and unzipped it.
Ran "./configure" and then "make"...
[root@md2nj03mpp librdkafka-master]# make
...
...
gcc -MD -MP -g -O2 -fPIC -Wall -Wsign-compare -Wfloat-equal -Wpointer-arith -Wcast-align -c rddl.c -o rddl.o
gcc -MD -MP -g -O2 -fPIC -Wall -Wsign-compare -Wfloat-equal -Wpointer-arith -Wcast-align -c rdkafka_plugin.c -o rdkafka_plugin.o
Creating shared library librdkafka.so.1
gcc -shared -Wl,-soname,librdkafka.so.1 rdkafka.o rdkafka_broker.o rdkafka_msg.o rdkafka_topic.o rdkafka_conf.o rdkafka_timer.o rdkafka_offset.o rdkafka_transport.o rdkafka_buf.o rdkafka_queue.o rdkafka_op.o rdkafka_request.o rdkafka_cgrp.o rdkafka_pattern.o rdkafka_partition.o rdkafka_subscription.o rdkafka_assignment.o rdkafka_assignor.o rdkafka_range_assignor.o rdkafka_roundrobin_assignor.o rdkafka_sticky_assignor.o rdkafka_feature.o rdcrc32.o crc32c.o rdmurmur2.o rdfnv1a.o cJSON.o rdaddr.o rdrand.o rdlist.o tinycthread.o tinycthread_extra.o rdlog.o rdstring.o rdkafka_event.o rdkafka_metadata.o rdregex.o rdports.o rdkafka_metadata_cache.o rdavl.o rdkafka_sasl.o rdkafka_sasl_plain.o rdkafka_interceptor.o rdkafka_msgset_writer.o rdkafka_msgset_reader.o rdkafka_header.o rdkafka_admin.o rdkafka_aux.o rdkafka_background.o rdkafka_idempotence.o rdkafka_cert.o rdkafka_txnmgr.o rdkafka_coord.o rdbase64.o rdvarint.o rdbuf.o rdmap.o rdunittest.o rdkafka_mock.o rdkafka_mock_handlers.o rdkafka_mock_cgrp.o rdkafka_error.o rdkafka_fetcher.o snappy.o rdgz.o rdhdrhistogram.o rdkafka_lz4.o rdxxhash.o lz4.o lz4frame.o lz4hc.o rddl.o rdkafka_plugin.o -o librdkafka.so.1 -lm -lz -ldl -lpthread -lrt
/bin/ld: /usr/local/lib64/libz.a(crc32.o): relocation R_X86_64_32 against .rodata' can not be used when making a shared object; recompile with -fPIC /usr/local/lib64/libz.a: error adding symbols: Bad value collect2: error: ld returned 1 exit status make[1]: *** [librdkafka.so.1] Error 1 make[1]: Leaving directory /home/lt5923/librdkafka-master/src'
make: *** [libs] Error 2

I understand it wants libz.a to be rebuilt with -fPIC.

What I really want is not a shared object (.so) library but an archive for librdkafka.a and librdkafka++.a

Is there a way to bypass building/making of the shared object library and just make the archive libraries for kafka?