Alumni Spotlight: Edward Carrington
By: Serena Maria Daniels
Edward “Eddy” Carrington wants aspiring real estate developers to know about the deals that fall apart.
He wants them to know that finding a commercial tenant can take hundreds of conversations. That a signed lease doesn’t always mean a business will open. That completing construction only ushers in a new set of problems involving property management, security and the monthly loan payment that still has to be made.
Through his podcast, Flux City Detroit, and his work as a developer, Carrington has made a point of talking about those less-visible parts of the business.
“I want to demystify real estate development as best as I can,” Carrington said.
It’s knowledge he largely acquired through trial and error. Carrington entered real estate without formal development training, starting with a residential property in Southfield where he barely broke even. He kept going, eventually finding his way to Building Community Value and, later, the Ribbon, his 18-unit mixed-use development on East Warren that houses one of Detroit’s most exciting new restaurants.
Now, nearly a decade after going through BCV, Carrington is doing something he rarely saw when he was trying to find his own way into the industry: openly sharing what he has learned.
Born in Detroit and raised in Oak Park, Carrington remembers the commercial property owners he encountered who looked like him being guarded about their work and ownership. Years later, he would take a decidedly more public approach to his own development career. His own entry into real estate came after graduating from Eastern Michigan University and working at a Chase Bank branch at Grand River and Fenkell. There, he met auto workers who had full-time jobs at the plants and invested in real estate outside of work, viewing their properties as part of their retirement plans.
“I’m like, ‘I need to try my hand at it as well,’” says Carrington.
Carrington used the trial and error experienced from that first property in Southfield as a teachable moment. He continued buying, selling, and renting properties in Southfield and Detroit, including houses purchased through the Detroit Land Bank Authority. Some of those experiments were harder lessons: He ran out of money on projects and returned properties to the land bank when he realized he couldn’t finish them.
But commercial development still felt like a different world. That began to change when Carrington attended a Detroit Homecoming event and saw developer Cliff Brown of Woodborn Partners presenting a multimillion-dollar project, decked out in a blazer with a hoodie popping out and a pair of Jordans.
“Seeing him had me thinking, ‘OK, well, if he can do it, maybe I can do it too,’” says Carrington. “It kind of sparked the same type of curiosity as the Big Three employees and customers that I had when I worked at the bank [did], and so then I started looking into larger opportunities around the city.”
When non-profit community development financial institution Invest Detroit sought a developer for a site on East Warren, Carrington saw an opportunity. Before the developer was selected, he attended community meetings and talked with neighborhood leaders, residents, and business owners so he could understand the needs of the people along the east side corridor.
Carrington was ultimately selected to develop the Ribbon, a three-story, 21,000-square-foot mixed-use building with commercial space on the first level, and 18 residential units above.
Finding the right commercial tenant proved to be challenging; Carrington estimates he had more than 200 conversations with small businesses. Signed leases and letters of intent fell through as prospective tenants encountered financing problems, reconsidered lease terms, or simply stopped communicating.
Restaurant Little Liberia opened on the ground level of the development in spring 2026 and a flower shop is preparing to join it. But Carrington’s experience taught him that finishing a building is only one part of making a project work. Developers still have to navigate tenant relationships, property management, security, maintenance and the financial pressure of carrying millions of dollars in debt.
Those are the kinds of realities Carrington wants to bring into the open through Flux City Detroit. On the podcast, he shares his own experiences and talks with others in the real estate industry, creating space for conversations about the challenges and setbacks that can disappear from stories of successful development.
For Carrington, that also means encouraging other developers to talk publicly about their work. The more people share what they have learned, including where they have struggled, the more information becomes available to emerging developers trying to understand the business for themselves.
It’s the kind of access Carrington was searching for when he first began looking beyond single-family properties toward commercial development.