WICHITA, KS—Jack DeBoer has launched five major brands during his hospitality career, but his newest venture, WaterWalk Hotel Apartments, is going national at a faster pace than his preceding efforts. The executive started the Wichita, KS-based company last year to serve residents that want a temporary home that combines apartment living with hotel services. And it already has 21 new properties throughout the US in different stages of development. By contrast, Value Place, his chain of extended-stay hotels, began in Wichita but first spread through the Midwest before hitting Florida and the Eastern Seaboard.

“We are on target to get seven construction starts this year,” David Redfern, president of WaterWalk and former president of Value Place, tells GlobeSt.com, including a San Antonio location in July and others in Florida, Charlotte, Albany, NY, Kansas City, among other cities. In the spring, WaterWalk held its inaugural franchise conference in Wichita with more than a dozen different groups that included developers and operators of hotels, apartments and mixed-use projects.

The concept may have attracted their attention because it presents opportunities in the apartment sector, but without some of the possible downsides, Redfern adds. “They like this because it's a smaller price tag. We don't have to have 10 or 15 acres to build our apartments.”