Mack Feldman never expected commercial real estate to become his career. He studied government at Georgetown University, worked on Jeb Bush’s presidential campaign and planned to return to Washington after the election cycle ended. Instead, he stayed in Tampa, joined Feldman Equities and now helps oversee one of Tampa Bay’s largest privately held office portfolios alongside his father, Larry Feldman, the firm’s CEO.
Feldman joked that he spent his first three years at the company acting as his father’s secretary, sitting in on meetings, taking notes and learning how decisions moved through leasing, construction, financing and property management.
The experience immersed him in nearly every part of a company shaped through generations of family work in construction, development and office investment.
Earlier generations of the family worked as general contractors, helping build projects including the two main terminals at Chicago O’Hare International Airport, missile-based facilities for the US Navy and military barracks in upstate New York before eventually expanding into development and office ownership in the 1970s.
Larry alone has spent more than 40 years in commercial real estate and has overseen the management, acquisition or development of more than 11 million square feet of real estate during his career.
“It wasn’t even an inkling in my mind,” Feldman said of commercial real estate.
His perspective shifted while Feldman Equities pursued Riverwalk Place, a mixed-use development overlooking Tampa’s Riverwalk that the company initially acquired to protect views from the neighboring Wells Fargo Center office tower before broader development plans took shape.
Watching the project evolve changed how Feldman viewed development and its influence on daily urban life at a time when much of downtown Tampa still emptied after business hours.
“The idea of creating retail and restaurant activation along the Riverwalk really captured me,” Feldman said.
Feldman describes himself as “a St. Pete groupie,” and an urbanist, someone deeply interested in how cities function and grow. Over time, development began to feel less like a transaction business and more like a form of practical city-building tied to housing, transportation and urban growth.
“I’m a big believer in the ability of cities to improve human civilization,” Feldman said.
He said the Riverwalk project helped connect his longtime interest in public policy with development work at the local level and over time, development itself began to feel like a form of civic participation because the results were tangible and visible inside neighborhoods where people live and work.
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Inside the company, Larry exposed his son to nearly every part of the business, from lease negotiations and lender discussions to construction meetings and property management reviews. Feldman said his father’s management style centered heavily on mentorship and teaching, often by handing younger employees responsibilities before they felt fully prepared for them.
Six months after joining the company, Larry assigned him responsibility for negotiating tenant buyouts inside a waterfront office building slated for redevelopment.
“I didn’t know jack about commercial real estate,” Feldman said.
The assignment established an expectation that still shapes the company’s culture today: employees are expected to step into unfamiliar responsibilities and learn through direct experience inside an entrepreneurial environment where responsibility often comes before complete readiness.
“That was kind of my first cut of, ‘Here’s your own task. You figure it out,’” Feldman said.
Feldman described the first several years inside the company as “learning by fire hose,” an experience that eventually led him to pursue a master’s degree in real estate from New York University’s Schack Institute of Real Estate to deepen both his technical understanding of the business and his long-term commitment to the industry.
After returning from New York, Feldman expanded his role across leasing, construction, property management and asset operations while helping modernize several internal systems, including investor reporting, asset management software and capital syndication efforts.
“We weren’t in QuickBooks,” Feldman said. “We did everything in PDFs and Excel spreadsheets.”
Today, Feldman oversees much of the firm’s investor relations and operational execution, including syndicated investment offerings that have grown to more than 1,300 investors. At the same time, Larry remains heavily focused on acquisitions, negotiations and long-term strategy.
“We have truly complementary interests and skill sets,” Feldman said.
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As Feldman took on larger operational and investment responsibilities, leadership inside the company expanded through initiative and performance rather than hierarchy alone.
“If you want responsibility, go and take it and show that you can handle it,” Feldman said. “And if you fail at it, he’ll come down the ladder and take that control right back.”
Working together also reshaped their relationship outside the office. Their offices now share a wall and conversations about acquisitions, operations and development projects frequently continue at family dinners because much of the family remains involved in the business.
Feldman described his father as highly attentive and deeply engaged during conversations, qualities he said strengthened both their working relationship and the company culture.
“When you’re talking to him, you have his full attention,” Feldman said. “I’ve spent more time with my dad than I ever have at any point in my life, and it’s been very gratifying.”
Feldman has remained deeply involved in civic and policy organizations throughout Tampa Bay, serving on the boards of the St. Petersburg Downtown Partnership where he’s the incoming chair, YIMBY St. Pete and the Urban Land Institute. In recent years, he has also advocated for zoning reforms and transit-oriented development policies in St. Petersburg while remaining active in discussions around housing and urban growth.
Development, Feldman said, has increasingly become his form of civic participation as he watches neighborhoods evolve around projects the company helps shape. More than a decade after arriving in Tampa, planning to leave, he now works alongside his father on acquisitions, operations and long-term investment decisions that shape the company’s future.
“We’re working on actual, tangible, practical things,” Feldman said. “And we can see the impact it has on the neighborhood around us.”
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