Article Excerpt:
TWST: We'd like to begin with a brief historical sketch of the company and a picture of things as they are now.Mr. Kite: As you probably know, the company, Kite Realty Group, went public last summer in August. Previous to that, we were a private real estate and construction business that was founded mainly in the construction business in 1960 by my father Al, and then we remained in the various construction industries for the next 25 years. In the late 1980s, we started to participate in some real estate partnerships. And then approximately in early 1990, we began to operate a full-service real estate company independent of the construction business. Previous to that, it had been essentially an affiliate or a subsidiary. So at that point, we became a full-line development and real estate business and began to grow the company from there. That's a little of the history of how we got into it. Then throughout the 1990s to today, frankly, we began evolving the company from various forms of real estate development. We were active in all forms of retail, office and other commercial developments, and then really began to focus in on retail as the main component of the business about five, six years ago.
TWST: It seems that you took a fairly long time before you decided to go
public. Was there any special reason for that?
Mr. Kite: I think there were a lot of reasons. Obviously, going public
is a marriage of timing and opportunity. The timing and opportunity
measured up well last year for us as we were in a position as a company
to be ready for that. I think people sometimes don't realize that the
transition or the jump from being a private entity to a public entity is
not only a lot of work, but from a system standpoint, your company needs
to be ready for that in today's world of Sarbanes-Oxley. So we felt that
as a company, we were ready to make that transition at that point in
time.
Tickers included in this excerpt: KRG
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