Our Founder, Joe Hollingsworth Jr.
It is easy to describe the management and personal style of our founder in three words, “Onward and Upward”. Joe Hollingsworth Jr. began his journey in business at the age of 15. In partnership with his father, Joe build his first house in Clinton, TN. At the age of 16, he built his first house by himself and over the next 8 years he built over 100 homes.
Joe’s next business venture relied on his prior real estate development experience, but quickly took him in another direction. In 1974 Joe developed his first commercial buildings in the convenience store market. The client fell behind and Joe found himself running a convenience store chain as well as his real estate business. Renamed Git’N Go Markets, the company is still thriving today in Anderson County, TN. The business has won a national award as one of the top 4 best managed convenient store chains in the nation.
In that same year, Joe started buying and selling commercial retail tracts and industrial tracts within Anderson County. At the time he didn’t know it, but this would be an important step in his future career. Years later this early experience with industrial properties would lead his company to become the largest developer for semi-rural industrial property in the Southeast.
In 1978, due to a shortage of affordable housing in the Clinton area, Joe left the single-family residential market and dug deeper into the commercial development market. In addition to buying and selling tracts of commercial property, Joe took a leap into the development of multifamily residences with the design and construction of apartment complexes. These apartment complexes are still owned and managed by the company which presently house approximately 7% of Clinton, TN’s total population.
In 1990 Joe established Centre Stage Business Park and began his journey into the development of turnkey Industrial Properties. The company started constructing one new building biennially ranging in size from 45,000 to 100,000 square feet.
In early 1997, the industrial building program was expanded to include Prince George County, Virginia; Limestone County, Alabama; and Davie County, North Carolina. In 1999 the Virginia South Point Business Park won “The Best Semi-Rural Economic Development Program” in the nation from the National Association of Counties.
In 2003, to attract business to his beloved home in the Southeast, Joe completed a book titled “The Southern Advantage”. The book was written highlighting the progress that the South had made over the last fifty years and how it was laying the foundation for tremendous economic growth for the region. The book received endorsements from southern Governors and national CEOs alike. The book has been featured in over 100 newspapers and been mentioned on several national news shows.
In 2007, The Hollingsworth Companies received acclaim from “Southern and Business Development” magazine as the largest industrial developer/ investor in the Southeast that operates outside metro areas.
In 2011 Nicci Hollingsworth, Joe’s daughter joined the company after receiving her MBA from the University of Tennessee.
Today, Hollingsworth Companies and Hollingsworth Capital Partners comprise over 19M square feet in their industrial portfolio. The Hollingsworth Company is the largest industrial development firm that focuses on the untapped labor pool and economic development of semi-rural locations throughout the Southeast to include; Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia.
The company still maintains it’s headquarters in Clinton, TN where it continues to develop Industrial Building throughout the southeast and manage its portfolio of Industrial Business Parks, Convenience Stores, Apartment Buildings, and other real estate holdings.
