Development just "round Edwards Corner
Rick Mueller of Remonov Developers soon will be breaking ground on Edwards Corner, a two-story, 54,000-square-foot, $16 million retail and office building. It’s going in on 2.5 acres of the southeast corner of U.S. Highway 6 and the Edwards Spur Road.
“With all that traffic, it’s highly visible,” says Mueller.
Once final county review on the project is complete as early as this fall, he says, he expects to begin moving dirt. Construction would end a year later.
“We saved the best and most visible piece for the end,” Mueller says.
Remonov developed both the 94,000-square-foot Edwards Village Center and the 80,000-square-foot Edwards Commercial Park in the late “90s, as well as 202 single-family homes in the Homestead area.
Support Local Journalism
Edwards Corner will even have a architectural oddity on its southwestern end – a corner office and retail space that some people are dubbing “the leaning tower.”
“We want to make this as maintenance-free as possible,” Mueller says. “We’ll use brick and steel and we’ll have heated sidewalks.”
Price of the retail space on the first floor and offices on the second floor will probably be in “the high $20s-per-foot price,” Mueller says. There will be 79 underground parking spaces and lots of above-ground parking. Mueller says Eagle County requires one parking space per 225 square feet of building space, but on Edwards Corner the ratio is closer to one space per 210 square feet.
Mueller says studies he’s seen indicate approximately 25 percent of the businesses he expects to move into the new building will come from existing local businesses in Edwards. Another quarter, he says, will come from businesses in Vail and Beaver Creek looking to move downvalley to take advantage of the year-round employment base. The remaining 50 percent, he says, will come from new businesses and operators of home businesses that want to expand.
Mueller says he expects the project will be fully leased in about 12 months.
In appearance, he adds, the project will homogenize the “nouveau West” look of Edwards Village and the “quasi-Victorian” look of the Riverwalk.
One of the factors driving the decision to build now is the fact that building prices have dropped with a cooling of the red-hot demand of the 1990s, Mueller says.
“The price of labor and materials is down,” Mueller says. “People are looking for work.”
Mueller says he expects the cost of the project to be approximately $275 per square foot.
Getting the proper mix of businesses for the project is what he calls “an unknown science.”
“Most of the service industries are already well represented in other areas,” he says.
There may be opportunity for clothing stores, computers, office supply or other shops, he says, and many of the retail spaces will be “unique boutiques.”
Some corporate retail operations have been contacted, he Mueller says, but he’s not counting on them leasing space.
The traffic from Cordillera, Arrowhead and elsewhere is the key, he says.
“There is lots of disposable income driving by,” he says.
