ORLANDO—Franklin Street just pulled off a recruiting coup. The company has hired Kurt Keaton, a longtime executive at JLL.
After 16 years with JLL, Keaton is heading to Franklin Street’s Tampa office. He is in charge of growing the real estate and management services divisions and leading development of the businesses in line with the company’s core values.
“The addition of Kurt Keaton is a major step for our company,” says Franklin CEO and managing partner Andrew Wright. “We are thrilled to have someone with Kurt’s experience and industry knowledge on board to help lead these divisions. His dedication to teamwork and background in the Air Force solidifies his belief in our core values and I’m looking forward to having him as an integral part of our team.”
Before joining Franklin, Keaton served as managing director at JLL. He was responsible for delivering the national investor suite platform to owner clients across the US markets, including property management, project management, agency leasing and investment sales. Before that, Keaton was JLL’s market director for Florida, monitoring the profit and loss of the entire company’s brokerage, property management and project management operations across the state.
“Tampa continues to be a flourishing market, with strong activity by both tenants and investors,” Keaton tells GlobeSt.com. “With only a handful of options remaining in top-tier buildings for large blocks of space, landlords continue to capitalize. Investors have taken notice, as more than half of the Class A office buildings have traded in the Tampa CBD since 2014.”
Under Keaton’s leadership, JLL quadrupled its investor client portfolio to over 30 million square feet throughout Florida. He has been twice named as one of JLL’s “Top Guns” and is a two-time winner of the JLL Club Award and Management Excellence Award.
