Ex-president of Pelican Bay Foundation has full schedule in condos management

Kyle Kinney may have left behind his paid position as Pelican Bay Foundation's president, but he has no intention of stepping out of the spotlight.

In addition to nurturing his private property management business, Kinney said he is scheduled in September to launch a cable TV show addressing condominium and homeowner association issues.

Kinney, 42, left the foundation late last month to pay more attention to Park Avenue Property Management, a company he co-founded in December 2004 with partner Russ Burland.

"It was my decision to move on. My partner and I started working on this two years ago. I have remained a silent, but managing, partner since the beginning. In all fairness to the foundation, I could not renew my contract and really go full steam ahead on the company," Kinney said earlier this week. "Without advertising, we have almost 1,500 condo units under management and we really only hit the market four or five months ago."

Park Avenue clients include Crown Colony Golf & Country Club, Pelican Isle Yacht Club, and two Fort Myers high-rises. Crown Colony is in Fort Myers.

Friday morning, Kinney met with directors of one Pelican Landing condo community. That contract is scheduled to be ratified Tuesday, he said.

He and Burland expect to have 300 more units by July 1, he said.

They have studied the market and there's a tremendous need for first-rate management services, he said.

Park Avenue is for associations that want hands-on local management, because he and Burland have noticed numerous national companies trying to break into Florida's growing market, Kinney said.

One example of that is a management company's reporting style.

Kinney said he and Burland promise clients that they will have association board minutes within seven business days of their previous meeting.

It is not unusual for such minutes to show up months later, Kinney said.

That's why Park Avenue will send along a manager with a laptop computer, instead of a large yellow, legal pad, he said. The past month has been "exhilarating," Kinney said Friday afternoon.

A former Ritz hotel and resort manager, Kinney found his way, by accident, into community association management seven years ago.

He was managing the Windstar Country Club and mentioned to his wife one day that the Pelican Bay Foundation was looking for a general manager.

"I sent in my resume to appease Sherry," Kinney said, referring to his wife.

The most visible of Pelican Bay's paid professionals — he lives in Lely in East Naples — Kinney became widely known during Pelican Bay's two-year drive to become part of Naples.

Naples City Council members rejected that annexation effort on a 4-3 vote on Dec. 7.

Kinney acknowledges that the defeat played into his full-time attention to Park Avenue Property Management.

"If annexation had occurred, I wouldn't have moved on. With that no longer being on the table, and the growth of (my) company, the timing was just right to jump on the train," Kinney said.

Pelican Bay leaders say they're sorry to see Kinney go.

Pelican Bay Foundation board member Jim Carroll, a former Pelican Bay Services Division chairman who was anti-annexation, said Kinney's departure was a sad surprise.

"We were all pleased with (the job) he had done," Carroll said Friday morning. "I enjoyed working with Kyle."

Kinney said his TV show will be on UPN.

On May 25, Burland and Kinney moved Park Avenue's offices to Bonita Beach Road in Bonita Springs.