Decade Answers: Lon Rubackin

Lon Rubackin is a managing partner at GFI Capital, New York, N.Y. What was one of your corporate or career highlights of the decade? 2000 was a year of great change for me. Along with a new millennium I changed prospectives. For the prior 15 years I was on the tenant side first with Nobody Beats the Wiz and then with Barnes & Noble. In 2000, I joined Forest City Ratner where I spend most of the decade as head of leasing. I've been very fortunate to work both the tenant side and the landlord side when retail real estate was doing so well. Now, as head of GFI Retail at the start of a new decade, I can use my experience to help guide others through these very rocky waters. I look forward to the challenge of the next 10 years. What are your predictions for commercial real estate in the new decade? Good question. Who can really predict with any degree of certainty? I am sure we'll experience a number of cycles where fortunes will be made and lost. If we can learn anything from the last two years it this: Competition on all levels will get smarter and tougher and the winners will be the ones willing to learn and adapt and not make the same mistakes twice.