TIFTON — With all the talk about the economy doing poorly, it is good to know that there are still some home-grown businesses making it big. GS Development, LLC is a development company owned and overseen by Dr. Gerald Sapp, CEO of the company, and his wife, Marilyn.

Dr. Sapp served South Georgia for 23 years as an orthopedic surgeon before turning a lifetime hobby into a booming business with his wife. It started in the 1980s when he bought his first piece of real estate: a house. From there he moved on to apartments and developable land plots before purchasing a piece of land near Interstate 75 in 1995 which would become Courtyard by Marriott. The business has taken off from there.

“In this day and age, you don’t have to live in places like Atlanta to do business. We are located in Tifton because this is where we are from,” Dr. Sapp said.

The company currently owns and manages five hotels in the Georgia-Florida area, four shopping centers, two build-to-suit restaurants and over 500 self-storage units.

GS Development works in sync with two other divisions, GS Hospitality, LLC and GS Management, LLC, to acquire and manage property around the southern United States. Together they handle the entire development process from start to finish.

First, development works with investors to procure real estate sites that are affordable and in good locations. Sometimes, because the company has become so established, they are even contacted first about putting in new franchises. Once they’ve gotten their land and the franchise to go on it, they hire an architect and a construction company to put up.

From there management takes over in acquiring a manager to run the hotel and hire other staff to fill the needed positions.

Hospitality focuses on operations at each hotel to make sure that each venue holds to the standards of its company, for example, keeping up with Hilton standards.

“We handle everything but construction itself,” said Dr. Sapp, “And we’re looking into creating an in-house construction company in the future.”

Management is also looking into branching out through third-party management. They hope to be hired to manage hotel franchises that they don’t own and whose owners don’t want to or don’t have the capability of running the management themselves.

GS Development has become one of the leading development companies in the Southern area, so much so that they are often called for their opinions on land acquisitions, franchises and marketing.

They’ve worked closely with the Hilton Corporation since about 1996 and have been involved in 11 Hilton projects since then. Hilton was so pleased with the company that Sapp and his wife were sent on an expenses-paid trip to Beijing, China for the 2008 Olympics as a preferred Hilton franchisee.

“It was very entertaining and a wonderful, eye-opening experience.” Dr. Sapp said.

They are currently working on two Embassy Suites in the Atlanta area, one in Duluth which will be starting construction soon and will have 259 units, and one in Kennesaw with 195 rooms which is a third of the way completed. They also are working on a Hilton Garden Inn in Tampa, Fla., with 119 rooms slated to open in three months.

“This all started as a hobby,” Sapp said. “I enjoy real estate and I enjoy development and I do it because that is our business but I couldn’t do any of this without the people behind me, helping me. Greg Jacobs, my VP and director of finance, is really my right-hand man.”