When Henry Edgar started his own development company, he was inspired by the drives around Edmonton he would take with his dad, who pointed out the buildings bearing his company’s name. Fast forward three decades and Edgar is leaving an indelible mark on the city’s core with his own company, the Autograph Group.
After first making a splash (through EDGAR group) with the construction of the Hendrix — a stylish 260-unit apartment building just a stone’s throw from the Legislature grounds — Edgar, through Autograph, has set an urbane, human-focused development style across Wîhkwêntôwin and downtown.
“It’s this idea of building something interesting or not building at all,” Edgar says from the Mercury Block, a mixed-use building that is Autograph’s latest contribution to an area being dubbed the West Village. “I learned early in my career that I didn’t want to build badly. I wanted to build something that was going to make an impact and be meaningful to the city.”
And with the construction of the Hendrix, Mercury Block and The MacLaren, as well as three more planned projects, Autograph is going for maximum impact. By focusing on highly-amenitized developments that centre walkability and accessibility, Edgar and his team have helped create the kind of 10-minute micro-communities typically associated with coastal metropolises.
But Edgar is still focused on what is to come.
“Edmonton has a number of blank pages on it,” Edgar says, pointing to the many underutilized areas in the city’s core. “You go to Vancouver and you might see a building pop up on an empty lot but you won’t get to see whole districts. How many other cities have an opportunity to build four buildings side-to-side on one street?
“So I think that’s Edmonton’s advantage. We have this opportunity to write a lot of the story on what the city can become.”
This article appears in the Nov/Dec 2024 issue of Edify
