Jacksonville native David Smith founded Smith McKee Construction LLC in July 2021 and is the 2022 president of the NAIOP Commercial Real Estate Development Association Northeast Florida Chapter. He worked with Elkins Construction and Danis Construction before starting Smith McKee, which focuses on small to midsize commercial construction, primarily ground-up. His father, commercial real estate broker Charles “Corky” Smith, died in 2007.
I grew up in the Ortega neighborhood. My mom, Mary Kathryn, has been a teacher at St. Mark’s Episcopal Day School for 37 years. She’s been my role model from a work-ethic standpoint. That’s a lot of where I get my drive from. She pushed me and my brother and made sure that were dedicated students. She had us working at a very young age, as well. My first job was working at St. Mark’s during the summers when I was 13, 14 years old. She had me over there helping clean classrooms and move furniture.
I was a lifeguard at Timuquana Country Club for seven summers, starting when I was 15, and worked that job every summer when I was in college. When I was at Elkins, my first project as a project manager was a major renovation-expansion at Timuquana. That was a lot of fun.
Growing up, real estate wasn’t really on my radar until probably my junior year in high school. I enrolled at the University of Florida and visited the architecture school. My brother was already a construction management major and I visited that program and decided to give it a try. And 20 years later, it’s stuck.
For a long time, I’ve considered what’s the best way that I can make the greatest impact on the community and in the industry and arrived at the decision that starting my own business would be the best way to do that, through my efforts to help people grow in their careers and contribute to the advancement of our industry and promote best practices.
McKee is my mom’s maiden name. I really like the ring of it. It’s a way to pay respect to my mom’s side of the family. It’s been very rewarding to do business with folks I grew up with. Luckily a lot of my friends stayed in the community or made it back after college, and a lot of them have found their way into the commercial real estate industry.
My advice to someone who wants to start a business is to start planning early, put ideas on paper and use your network to get different perspectives on how to structure your business. Once you have your business plan in place, make sure you revisit it on a regular basis and focus on executing the plan day in, day out.
I love golf and have always been a big outdoorsman, so I love to hunt and fish. I’m a huge Gators fan as well. My brother and I have had season tickets to the games for 10-12 years. I try to make it to as many Jaguars games as I can as well.
I’m in Avondale. I took on a renovation and addition project. Between the home renovation, starting my own business and NAIOP, it’s been a lot of work.
I’m honored to be the NAIOP president for 2022 and proud of what we have planned for this year. We’re really focused on high-value programming. We plan a bus tour in May, which will be a home run as always.