Longtime Sarasota furniture store owner, philanthropist dies at 101

Longtime Sarasota businessman and philanthropist Ed Kalin never really settled on a traditional hobby. He played golf a little bit, fished here and there. He owned a boat for a time.

Then, in the 1960s and '70s, Kalin started doing some real estate deals. That became his passion, outside work and family. Kalin’s son Jeff says Ed Kalin would team up with a few other prominent Sarasota business leaders, from lawyers to doctors to Fortune 500 CEOs. This group often went in on deals together, from a 90-acre commercial site near Fruitville and Cattlemen roads that later became a Sam’s Club to the Main Plaza in downtown Sarasota.