Profile: Mark C Rusche

Real Estate

Biography: Real Estate

Mark Rusche is the co-leader of the firm's 90-lawyer real estate finance and investment group. His practice focuses on acquisitions and dispositions, joint venture work, senior housing transactions and commercial office leasing. Mark heads the firm's leasing team that represents both landlords and tenants in significant office leasing transactions throughout the country. He is on the board of editors of Commercial Leasing Law and Strategy, a nationally circulated monthly newsletter dealing with commercial leasing issues. Mark is a frequent writer and speaker on commercial leasing and other real estate topics. He is a member of CoreNet, REGA, the Atlanta Bar Association and the Real Property Section of the State Bar of Georgia.

Mark received his JD, cum laude, Order of the Coif, from the University of South Carolina in 1985 and his BA in History from Furman University in 1981. Mark has previously served as the hiring partner for Alston & Bird and has, for the past eight years, chaired our firm's space committee. In that role, he is responsible for structuring and negotiating the firm's office leases and for coordinating facilities construction nationwide. Mark is an active participant in the Atlanta community having been a member of, and having served on the boards of, numerous community organisations. He is currently the chancellor of St Luke's Episcopal Church and is a member of the board and chair-elect (2008) of the Piedmont Park Conservancy, which is the caretaker organisation for Atlanta's major, downtown, central park.

Mark serves as counsel to one of the 'Big Four' accounting firms for the past eighteen years, having handled numerous major office lease transactions throughout the US and in Puerto Rico. He is also national counsel to one of the largest pension fund real estate advisors in the US in connection with all senior housing transactions. In this role, Mark has handled major portfolio acquisitions and dispositions, complex joint venture transactions, acquisition and disposition of continuing care retirement communities and forward development investments. He also serves as counsel to a major real estate fund, backed by a significant national private equity fund, in connection with the acquisition, financing, lease-up and sale of a 12,000,000 square foot office portfolio throughout the southeastern United States.