Multi-Unit Franchisee Magazine Issue II, 2011 | Page 13

P O W E R

P L A Y E R S

By John Carroll

Developer
Extraordinaire
Measuring success by profits, not revenue

F

or more than 20 years Rick
Huffman and his two partners—
Sam Catanese and Marc Williams—
have been building things. They’ve
developed shopping centers, hotels,
apartment complexes, a large stock of
affordable housing units, and Branson
Landing, a $400 million mixed-use project in Branson, Mo.
Now, they’re building a hotel franchise as well. The trio’s portfolio includes
Hampton Inn and Hilton properties
along with four Value Place locations—
an extended-stay concept that has continued to thrive in a down economy by
promising hotel convenience and apartment essentials.
“It just made a lot of sense,” says
Huffman. “If we could build something
of apartment grade, at the bottom of
the extended-stay market from an affordability/price point, we thought the
model would be good.” Fine-tuning their
business strategy, Huffman and his partners have been focusing on areas with
military bases, like Ft. Leonard Wood in
Missouri and Junction City in Kansas,
minutes from Fort Riley.
“The military has a lot of travel and
a lot of extended stay involved with it,”
says Huffman. “There are a lot of moving
parts around a military base. The first
Value Place we built was in Junction
City, a huge military area with a lot of

Multi-unit Franchisee Iss u e II, 2011

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