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Brad Dumont
Name: Brad Dumont
Title: Managing Director, Edens
Age: 36
Experience: 14 years
Brad Dumont heads South Carolina-based developer Edens’ 20-employee Boston office and oversees development throughout New England and the New York metro area. The company is building a $295 million expansion of its South Bay Center property in Boston that will include a 12-screen AMC Theatre, 475 apartments, a 130-room hotel and additional retail and restaurant space. Since joining Edens in 2003, Dumont has been involved with development and leasing of more than 10 grocery-anchored shopping centers and overseen 1.5 million square feet of retail development in the Washington, D.C. metro area.
Q: How long did it take to assemble the South Bay parcels?
A: The existing South Bay Center is roughly 50 acres. The location is phenomenal and it’s an anomaly to have this asset so close to the city with public transportation surrounding it. But we always knew it was not meeting the market to provide another gathering place for the community. Developers have been targeting these parcels for 10 years. I got involved in 2014 and that’s when we started to make some ground with land owners. It’s been a long road. We assembled 11 acres off the backside of South Bay Center from two primary land owners.
Q: What’s Edens’ strategy for future development in the Northeast: a continuing focus on urban infill sites?
A: Definitely we’re following the demographic shifts. Where are the Millennials and Baby Boomers willing to live? Our newer projects are focused more in the urban core and urban markets.
Q: What’s taking the place of traditional anchor stores?
A: The largest tenant will be AMC (theaters). They sit on the second floor with 48,000 square feet. But the remainder of the retail will be smaller. We’ll have a couple of junior anchors to drive more trips to the center, but we’re focused on dining and entertainment with restaurants and smaller retailers that don’t exist at the existing South Bay Center.
There’s definitely a shift in the retail industry and at Edens we’re trying to focus on the right mix to make people feel comfortable, which is a little bit different than your traditional department store model. The key is finding the right mix of boutiques, and some national and independent players. That’s more of an art than a science.
Q: Are you trying to contrast the tenant mix with what WS Development is bringing to the Seaport?
A: We travel the country and look at all types of projects to find best practices. We talk to a lot of our counterparts on what they experience and learn a lot. I don’t think we try to benchmark what WS is doing here. It really comes down to shifting away from the traditional retail model. We’re detail-oriented in planning for public spaces. We may not have a large park we can work with in urban areas, but we have pocket parks we can designate for different activities.
Q: What’s the leasing rate so far?
A: There’s going to be multiple phases. We have over 70 percent of the retail preleased in the first phase of retail, 130,000 square feet in the first two buildings, and are hoping to open that toward the holidays. The next phase will be more residential and hospitality in 2018: 450,000 square feet of residential and 30,000 square feet of retail that sits below on the ground floor and a 90,000-square-foot hotel.
Q: Why did you select IMAX and AMC Prime as the theater formats and what are their differentiators?
A: We had multiple theaters interested in the site. AMC made a really compelling case, wanting this to be one of Boston’s luxury offerings. Their sales pitch was the partnership with Dolby Cinema at AMC technology. We were blown away with some of the technology they’re bringing to them with 4K laser projection. We’ll also have an IMAX auditorium side-by-side.
Dumont’s Top 5 Weekend Activities:
- Date night with his wife, Lindsey, or cooking dinner for friends
- Going on hikes with his family – wife Lindsey, son Jack and Soley, the dog
- Coaching youth lacrosse
- Dancing to old records with Jack
- Pick-up basketball
