CEO, The Mattone Group

What one factor is most important to success?

Educational preparation.

What do you look for in an employee?

I guess, essentially, some type of career dedication. Sufficient competency in the area they’re assigned to, as well as some historical perspective—that they’ve performed well elsewhere.

What’s the best way to save money?

Prudent spending is the only answer to that. You’ve got to be sure how much you’re spending, and what you’re spending it on. Make sure whatever is spent is for the proper cause or for the proper reasons.

What’s the best way to spend money?

Decide on what you feel is important to you in terms of your social, and various charitable, structures that you would support. Like different community groups. I think that’s how you spend money, you spend money to do something positive.

What’s your greatest pleasure?

The greatest pleasure I take in life is my 26 grandchildren, and my sons and daughters. Essentially, from a rather selfish point of view, the ability to make a deal happen, in terms of business. Not the money, though; the fact that you’re able to put the deal together.

What’s the first thing you do when you wake up in the morning?

Well, I thank God. I’m 73 and still able to go to work everyday, and I still have the ability to analyze my area well, which is real estate and finance and the law. So I thank God for those gifts, as well as having an understanding wife.

How do you deal with stress?

I run the treadmill, for one. And I try to justify diverting the stress, as a necessary ingredient to making it go away.

What one lesson do you hope to pass on to your children?

That it’s important to choose a career that’s rewarding and satisfying. And to remember that it’s important to leave this world a little better place than how you found it. And if you’re endowed with a little bit more of the goods of the world, to not hesitate to share them. I didn’t have that choice, my parents weren’t well off.

How do you bounce back from adversity?

There’s an old adage, “Success is easy to live with, but adversity takes real strength of character.” So, I guess the one word is perseverance, to me. If you don’t persevere, you don’t know how to deal with adversity.

What’s your favorite thing about Queens?

That it’s finally coming to recognize the important part it will play in the rest of the city.

Mattone’s experience in the business world is vast. The Mattone Group, a Queens-based development and construction company, is currently working on the construction of the new Elmhurst Theater (at the intersection of the Long Island Expressway and Queens Boulevard). The project will build a 15-screen multiplex theater in Elmhurst, adjoining the Queens Center Mall.

The Mattone Group has also purchased the former CYO camp in Whitestone, Queens, and is developing 110 single-family homes. The first phase and second phase of has already been completed and contracted.

His law office represents six major commercial and thrift institutions as outside counsel.