Photo: Freshfields Village, Kiawah, SC
EDENS’ mission is to enrich community through human engagement. A visit to one of our places is more than a simple trip to the store. We measure what matters with hard data, but also less tangible but highly valued social capital—the impact that emotional connection has on local communities.
But, let’s talk about the numbers!! The following is an excerpt from the Post & Courier’s feature article, Leaving so soon? Developers have new ideas to encourage SC shoppers to ‘linger longer.’
Photos:Alamo Plaza, Alamo, CA, Crosshill Market, Columbia, SC
At outdoor shopping centers around the Lowcountry, swaths of concrete parking lots are being replaced by landscaped medians.
Nondescript brick walls are getting painted over with murals from local artists.
The newest movement to draw more shoppers? Replacing “strip malls” with a highly curated shopping destination, creating a reason to linger longer. The goal is to get people to spend hours at a center, with its shopping, coffee, dining and entertainment options, rather than to run in and out in minutes.
While some shopping centers, such as Freshfields Village near Kiawah Island and Mount Pleasant Towne Centre, originally were built around green space with gathering areas, the shopping destination model is now being applied to aging centers across the Lowcountry.
Thoughtful amenities are now the rule, not the exception.
Rendering: Ashley Landing, West Ashley, SC
In late September, the City of Charleston-owned former Piggly Wiggly site in West Ashley got the green light from city council for a new 35-acre large-scale mixed-use development.
Plans call for an apartment complex, townhomes and over six acres of green space and 230,000 square feet of retail and restaurant space. With the renovation, the Publix would move across the parking lot to continue anchoring the commercial complex.
“In a perfect world, you want somewhere between 10 and 20 percent of the square footage dedicated to unique locally-owned community businesses,” said Jodie McLean, CEO of Edens, which owns and operates Freshfields Village on Kiawah Island and Moultrie Plaza in Mount Pleasant, and will develop the newly dubbed Ashley Landing. “People love their local drip coffee, but they also love Starbucks. People love a sit-down restaurant, but they also love the local sandwich shop.”
Columbia-based Edens owns 7 billion square feet of retail shopping across the country. The company purchased Freshfields Village in 2022 for $125 million and Moultrie Plaza soon after.
McLean started working for Edens in 1990 and has seen firsthand the evolution of shopping centers and variable shopping behaviors, including a concern that widespread home internet access in the early 2000s would move the majority of shopping online.
“We were thinking about what our future looked like and we unveiled a new purpose and mission of enriching the community by bringing people together … with three-and-a-half trips per week and five hours of dwell time to our places,” McLean said.
Read the full article from May 2, 2025 here.
Canvas