Larry Feldman, President & CEO, Feldman Equities

August 2026 —Invest: sat down with Larry Feldman, president and CEO of Feldman Equities, to discuss what’s driving office demand in Tampa Bay, how the firm is investing in next-generation amenities, and why he sees opportunity returning to a sector many wrote off after the pandemic. “Markets that people assumed were effectively dead for office a year or two ago have started to show meaningful improvements,” Feldman said.

What changes over the past year impacted your operations, and in what ways?

The past year has been very interesting in the office building world, particularly in Tampa Bay. Our occupancy has increased, and we ended the year at our highest occupancy ever, at around 94% across our 2.5 million square feet of office space.

Our rental rates also rose about 8% on average year over year. At the same time, the value of our buildings has declined. It’s a strange situation to be in, where interest rates and broader perceptions about office have hurt valuations, but demand has never been better. The rental rates have never been better.

New construction is also grinding to a halt. In many places, you’re seeing more buildings come out of the office inventory through conversions or demolition than you’re seeing in new office starts. So supply is constrained while demand has picked up.

And the work-from-home trend is beginning to fade more and more. Our physical occupancy is going up, and it’s not just my opinion. There are firms that track return-to-office patterns through anonymized location data, and the month of December 2025 was the highest occupancy month since the pandemic. We’re still not at full recovery, but it was the best month yet in the post-pandemic period.

What recent developments best reflect where the company is headed?

For the first time in many years, we’re developing a new project that includes an office component. We’re working on the Waldorf Astoria project in downtown St. Petersburg, adjacent to two office buildings that we have owned for about 16 years. We’re taking the garage serving those buildings and redeveloping it as the podium for a 50-story tower.

The primary product in the tower is condominium, but there will be three floors of office space that are designed to be best-in-class. It’s going to include the latest state-of-the-art amenities, water views, and one of the best locations in Tampa Bay, right in the heart of St. Petersburg.

How are you approaching talent attraction and workforce development today?

In office leasing, there’s a phrase that has become such a cliché that it might be one of the most overused statements in the industry right now, and that is flight to quality. In this case, even though it’s a cliché, it’s actually true.

What does it mean? The obvious part that we’ve known for decades is location. There’s a flight to the best locations, and in Florida, that typically means downtowns. People want to be in the heart of downtown, and that’s where young talent is moving in large numbers.

Downtown St. Petersburg is a good example of that evolution. Twenty years ago, it had a very different profile than it does today. Now you see thousands of young professionals, Gen Xers and millennials, flocking downtown. They want a walkable environment, with energy and things to do.

But flight to quality doesn’t stop with location. Within the building, it means amenities, amenities, amenities. As a company, we started focusing on that 30 years ago, before it was popular. We started putting in fitness centers, conference centers, and services like that, and in many cases offering them at no additional charge to our tenants. Post-COVID, we’ve dramatically stepped up that game.

We just completed about a $5.5 million renovation on our City Center office building in downtown St. Petersburg. The amenities are not just a fitness room with one treadmill and a television. It’s a real fitness center, with major equipment, weight training systems, and space that feels closer to a full-service gym than a token amenity. There are showers and changing rooms, and there are areas for stretching, yoga, and general wellness.

In addition to that, we have a conference center that can seat 60 to 80 people with modern video conferencing. We have a café in the lobby called Bean Wandering, and it has become a destination. People will travel to it because it’s a great concept and a great environment.

We also have a Northern Trust bank branch in the building, and we have a 24/7 soft-seating lounge. There are desktop areas where people can bring out a laptop and work throughout the day. We have large flat-screen displays that showcase nature scenes, and the overall experience is intentionally calming and high quality.

We also have a full-time concierge desk that looks like something you’d see in a hotel lobby. The look and feel of the lobby is designed to feel more like a four- or five-star hotel than a conventional office entrance. It’s office meets hospitality, and that is what it takes to attract people from their homes into the office.

Employers want employees back. But instead of threatening people or trying to force behavior, the smarter approach is to create best-in-class space. Companies may downsize their footprint a bit, but they’re willing to pay more for higher quality space with better experiences. That’s where flight to quality is going, and we’ve leaned into it across our portfolio.

What are the biggest challenges you are navigating, and where are you still finding opportunities?

One of the biggest challenges is the disconnect between improving fundamentals and the debt markets. Demand is increasing in our markets, and that trend is also starting to pick up in other parts of the country. Markets that people assumed were effectively dead for office a year or two ago have started to show meaningful improvements. For example, in parts of New York, vacancy levels have dropped substantially from prior highs. There are also early signs of improvement even in places like San Francisco, which many had written off.

At the same time, the willingness of traditional banks to lend on office has remained constrained. Major commercial lenders have been cautious, and that caution doesn’t always track with what we’re seeing on the ground in terms of leasing and tenant demand.

What has filled some of that gap is private capital. Private equity firms have launched new debt funds, and they are stepping in where commercial banks have pulled back. They do charge more interest, which I don’t love, but the availability of debt has improved over the last year because of that private market activity.

When a market bottoms out, like office arguably did about two years ago, what often happens next is that opportunistic capital comes in. Even large institutions that previously said they wouldn’t touch office for a decade are beginning to reconsider because they’re now looking at the sector through the lens of opportunity rather than just risk.

So the challenges are still there, but the environment is thawing.

Looking ahead to the next two to three years, what are your key goals and priorities for Feldman Equities and the Tampa Bay market?

We want to continue building on our dominance here in Tampa Bay. One of our strengths is that we’re local, and we’re vertically integrated. I like being able to get in a car or walk to our buildings. Our management and leasing teams are hands-on with the physical reality of real estate. We’re not just finance people moving dollars around.

We are renovating spaces, making them beautiful, servicing tenants, solving day-to-day operational challenges, and staying close to the asset. That approach is much easier to execute when you’re local.

So our No. 1 priority is to continue buying office in Tampa Bay where we can apply our model. We come in with a significant upgrade and renovation program, and we’re going further than we’ve ever gone before in the level of reinvestment we’re making. We think that’s how you create durable demand and durable tenant relationships.

Alongside that acquisition and renovation strategy is our development effort. We have an active development track running in parallel, and we’re aiming to start construction soon on our Waldorf Astoria project in downtown St. Petersburg.

Between continuing to strengthen the existing portfolio and pushing forward with development, we feel very good about where the market is headed and about where Feldman Equities is positioned within it.