Feldman Equities is growing, hiring

In preparation for the development of a 52-story mixed-use downtown skyscraper in Tampa and potential acquisitions, Feldman Equities LLC has hired a handful of new employees in the past month.

“We're gearing up for a major expansion,” says Larry Feldman, the company's president and CEO. “We really want to expand the company significantly. My feeling is, if you're not growing, you're going to crash and die.”

In addition to Mack Feldman, Larry's son, the firm has hired Jonathan Schneider in construction, a property manager, financial analyst Mahmoud Mihanyar and, perhaps most notably, an executive vice president of leasing and marketing.

Mike DiBlasi joins Feldman from Liberty Property Trust, a Pennsylvania-based real estate investment trust where he was senior leasing director for the REIT's 4.2 million-square-foot Tampa-area portfolio.

Feldman first began talking to DiBlasi about joining the company four years ago over lunch.

“He has an extremely high level of respect within the brokerage community. That initially drew me, and I came to realize we share a lot of the same beliefs about how to lease up buildings,” Feldman says of DiBlasi. “And statistically, his production is amazing. He's one of the most prolific leasing guys in this market.”

At Feldman, DiBlasi will oversee leasing for the company and partner Tower Realty Partners' 1.3 million square feet portfolio, comprising the First Central Tower, City Center office building and Morgan Stanley Tower, all in St.

Petersburg, and the Wells Fargo Center, in downtown Tampa.

There, Feldman and Tower Realty also are working to develop a 52-story skyscraper that would contain more than 200,000 square feet of office space and be the tallest structure on Florida's West Coast.

In all, Feldman during the past three decades has developed or acquired more than 11 million square feet of office and retail space valued at roughly $3 billion.