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The Next Frontier
By Sarah Crosland, DC magazine
August 27, 2012
It’s hard to miss the South Carolina-based EDENS development group around DC these days. The lingering recession may have slowed some of the group’s markets in the rest of the country, but in the District, business is booming. And from freshening up suburban strip malls to creating urban destinations, like the highly anticipated Union Market, opening Sept. 8, EDENS has its finger in plenty of local real-estate pots. But its most ambitious—and game-changing—local project to date will be this month’s unveiling of the 1.9 million-square-foot Mosaic mixed-use project just outside the Beltway in Merrifield, Va.
“We sat down in 2004 and wrote down the principles of this project,” says EDENS President Jodie McLean. “For us, the guiding principles of a project are the values of the community in which we’re operating—and those don’t change during down economies.” Despite being based several states south and owning properties from Massachusetts to Florida, the group focuses heavily on homegrown talent. Luckily for them, in recent years, DC has developed plenty to offer.
“They had anchors in Target, Anthropologie and the Angelika [Film Center],” says Timothy Paul, who owns two eponymous home decor shops on 14th Street and is opening a third in Mosaic. “But they wanted real mom-and-pop shops to fill out this project.”
