Kollin Kite started working for his father, Keith Kite, right out of high school, lugging drywall and sweeping up at the Hampton Inn and Suites when that Miracle Mile hotel was under construction.
By the time the senior Kite was building another hotel – the Star Suites, next door to the Jackie Robinson Training Complex – Kollin was the expediter, in charge of ordering everything from carpeting to flatscreen TVs in the right quantities at the right times to keep the project moving.
In between times, he had graduated with a finance degree from the highly ranked Leeds School of Business at the University of Colorado Boulder and developed a fascination with commercial real estate.
Kollin, 33, who grew up in Castaway Cove and was a stand-out athlete at St. Edward’s School, came back to Vero Beach after graduating from business school in 2015 and joined his father as a junior partner at The Kite Group at Coldwell Banker Paradise.
Over the next 10 years, mentored by his father and pushed by his own ambitions, Kollin learned the ins and outs of managing and leasing commercial property and brokering deals for land and buildings in and around Indian River County.
He signed up big properties, such as Century Town Center on Route 60 across from the Indian River Mall, where Marshalls, Home Goods and Petco operate, along with a dozen or so other tenants, and successfully managed and leased the large, L-shaped shopping center.
“I met Kollin and interviewed him in 2018,” says Udy Nahum, who bought the plaza with a partner in October 2018, paying $16,975,000 for the property. “I saw a young guy who was very enthusiastic, which I liked. He reminded me of myself when I was starting out.
“I thought he would make it in the business and I was right. I am very pleased and very happy with how he has managed the center over the years, collecting checks and paying the bills and bringing in good tenants. I didn’t lose a dollar or a tenant during covid and the shopping center is 100 percent leased today. It is one of the best performing properties in my portfolio.”
“I have lots of properties and managers in different cities, but no one like Kollin,” says Nahum’s partner Avi Nechemia. “He is the nicest guy in the world, and it is a pleasure doing business with him. On a scale of 1 to 10, I give him 100.”
In 2023, Kollin was able to put the letters CCIM after his name, which stand for Certified Commercial Investment Member, a prestigious global real estate credential.
The program requires substantial cumulative sales and leasing numbers for entry, and getting the designation means taking eight tough courses and passing a day-long exam.
“It is like the master’s of real estate,” says Keith Kite. “I was very proud of him for earning that. It shows that he treats what we do as a profession, not just a job, and that he is an expert in the profession.”
That same year, Kollin was the top commercial broker at Coldwell Banker in the state of Florida, with approximately $25 million in sales and leasing volume.
In 2025, after 10 years with Coldwell Banker, the Kites moved their business back under the umbrella of Kite Properties, a firm Keith Kite founded in 2001 mainly as a development company. Kollin got his brokers license at the same time.
“Working as part of Coldwell Banker Paradise Commercial was a great experience that gave me a solid foundation for success, but by the time we left, we were well known enough to do it on our own,” Kollin says.
The move coincided with Keith Kite’s plan to edge into semi-retirement, and Kollin took the reins of the family company at age 32, becoming managing broker at Kite Properties and heading full tilt into the future.
“We now manage 700,000 square feet of commercial property in Indian River County,” Kollin told Vero Beach 32963. “For the most part, we only work for owners and landlords on an exclusive leasing basis.”
Under a typical Kite Properties contract, the company handles every aspect of property management, from maintenance and bookkeeping to leasing and tenant relations.
The brokerage side of the business is equally busy with numerous notable deals since Kollin took the lead, representing both sellers and buyers, including investors and developers.
He’s also made a major push into in-house development, with a 10-acre retail/restaurant/office project just approved in Port St. Lucie and several projects in and around Vero Beach in various stages of pre-development, with closings coming up and rezoning efforts underway.
“He is an up-and-comer,” says Mike Kirwin, a real estate attorney with statewide construction law firm Kirwin Norris who works with Kollin. “He is a great guy, very eager to accomplish things and very hard-working. He has an exciting ability to put development deals together.”
“My dad founded the company to develop hotels, so the development I am doing now brings the company full circle in a certain sense, though we are also fully committed to our property management and leasing and brokerage business,” Kollin says.
He spotted the property in Port St. Lucie two years ago and put together an investment group to purchase it for development.
The 10 wooded acres front on Crosstown Parkway, half a mile west of I-95, at a gateway to the rapidly growing Tradition master-planned development.
The property was zoned for multifamily housing, with as many as 200 townhomes. Kollin’s first main task was to get it rezoned for commercial use.
The City of Port St. Lucie, which has its own building department and planning and zoning authority, separate from St. Lucie County, was basically open to the idea. Residential development has been on a tear in Tradition, with the community’s headcount up 25 percent since the pandemic, to more than 12,000. But commercial development has not kept pace.
Even with a cooperative city, it took Kollin and his development team a year and half to get the new zoning approved, finally crossing the finish line last week.
Besides preparing for and attending multiple P&Z hearings and city council meetings with attorneys and engineers to coax the deal forward, Kollin had to negotiate with Tradition master developer Mattamy Homes, too.
The rezoning came in the form of an amendment to the masterplan. To get it, Kollin’s group had to work out an agreement with Mattamy to contribute more than half a million dollars for turning lanes, lights and other improvements at the intersection where the project will be built.
Another stipulation was that there could not be a gas station in the development. That was a setback because Kollin had already roped a group that planned to build a Wawa on part of the property.
“I was getting beat up a little bit out there,” says Kollin, who pushed through the development challenges and got the deal done.
The project is on track to include a major quick service restaurant and a national coffee chain, along with other businesses and offices. Kollin plans to break ground this spring, offering pad-ready lots with long-term land leases.
In Indian River County, Kollin is slated to close on another 10-acre parcel this week for a project like the one in Port St. Lucie, with other closings coming up.
He and his father are also working to extend Miracle Mile’s special mixed-use, pedestrian friendly zoning to encompass the former Doctors Clinic property, between Indian River Boulevard and Royal Palm Boulevard, south of the Kimley-Horn building.
The special zoning, which was approved by the city council in 2023, goes back in concept to Vero Beach’s 2006 vision plan, which calls for “the creation of mixed-use and ‘village’ development in strip commercial corridors in the area, including incorporating residential and other non-retail uses.”
Not much like that has happened in Miracle Mile itself, which was mostly built out in typical suburban strip mall fashion before the vision plan took shape. But there are several adjacent properties where mixed-use development could take root.
The 7-acre former Doctors Clinic property is one of those parcels. Working as agents for the owner, the Kites hope to eventually develop a project including some combination of multifamily housing, shops, a restaurant and possibly a hotel in a pedestrian friendly enclave. The development would be connected to Miracle Mile by a new roadway/walkway across the canal that currently separates the two areas.
“Keith Kite is a quality developer who we always look forward to working with,” says Vero Beach Planning Director Jason Jefferies. “He is very interested in extending the Miracle Mile mixed-use concept to property just north, which used to be the Doctors Clinic.”
Keith Kite is a classic small-town booster, a hotel operator and owner as well as a developer, who has been active on boards and committees focused on increasing tourism and economic development in and around Vero Beach.
He’s a member of the Indian River County Tourist Development Council and a board member for the Indian River County Chamber of Commerce.
His commitment to the city, which benefits Kollin in multiple ways as he works to expand the family business, goes back to the mid-1990s when the Kites arrived in town.
They moved down from Jacksonville “because of St. Edward’s,” says Keith Kite. “We had two children – Kollin and Kyle – so the school was very important to us. Also, it was sunny and 70 when we visited, with grapefruit still blooming along Indian River Boulevard, while it was in the 20s in Jacksonville.”
The family’s roots in Florida go back 130 years.
“My great, great grandfather made it to Lake Butler [between Gainesville and Jacksonville] in the 1890s,” Keith Kite says. “They were turpentine farmers.”
The turpentine business morphed into a hardwood floor finishing enterprise, with the sons of the elder Kite giving a gleam to the floors of the grand hotels built on Florida’s east coast by railroad magnate Henry Flagler.
After the family relocated to Daytona Beach, the floor business expanded into a major painting enterprise that grew to be one of the 10 largest industrial painting companies in the U.S. in the 1970s and 1980s.
“My father, Albert Kite, painted schools all across the state, and we later painted 30 auto plants across the country – Chevy, Chrysler, Toyota and others,” says Keith Kite, who worked for his father for 20 years and took over the company with his brother after his father’s death.
Keith Kite later moved to Vero and made the transition to developer, a legacy his son Kollin carries on today.
Now almost semi-retired, or at least trying to be, Keith Kite lives with his wife, Kay, in their longtime Castaway Cove home eight months out of the year. They spend the other four months – July to October – in Seattle, where they have two grandchildren.
He comes back one week a month for business, which includes operating three hotels in Vero Beach – Hampton Inn and Suites, where he is the franchisee; Springhill Suites, where he is part owner; and Star Suites, which is owned by Riverside Theatre. He is also working with Riverside on its upcoming major expansion.
Kite Properties, now run by Kollin, manages property from Stuart to Melbourne, specializing in retail plazas and medical offices, with its primary market in Indian River County. Kollin is looking for development opportunities from the Port St. Lucie area up to Melbourne.
“I could go on and on about the business,” says Kollin. “You can see I am very passionate about it. We have brokerage, management and development, and we are very good at all of them!”
