The Mosaic District in Merrifield will get a Ted’s Bulletin location as well as nearly 500 new office workers when the Custom Ink t-shirt company moves its offices from McLean in 2014.
The leases are two of the final puzzle pieces for the Target-anchored project’s first phase, which opened a year ago. Custom Ink is taking all 73,000 square-feet of office space in the project, bringing much-needed weekday clientele for the development’s many retailers, said Tom Kiler, vice president of development for the center’s owner, Edens.
Ted’s Bulletin is one of the last retail spaces open in the center: Retail is about 97 percent leased, said Kiler. Ted’s will open next door to Matchbox in late 2014, close to the soon-to-open Cyclone Anaya’s Mexican restaurant, casual men’s clothing store Federal and skate shop Palace 5five.
Ted’s partner Ty Neal said they decided to bring Matchbox’s sister concept to Mosaic after seeing a positive response at the pizza restaurant, which opened this past spring. They also figured they might as well corner the market in that area, he added.
“We looked at the 50 yards of boarded up plywood beside us, and we said, ‘Well, we have another concept we love, and it works well side by side with Matchbox,'” he said. “Better us than a competitor.”
With the concentration of restaurants and retail, what Mosaic really needs now is people passing through, which is where the office lease and the surrounding housing comes in. The Avalon Mosaic, which is expected to bring those people in, includes 530 apartments that just started leasing.
“Essentially, Merrifield was a place where people would travel through, rather than traveling to,” said Steve Boyle, a managing director at Edens. “That perception has to evolve.”
