BVM May 2016 - page 127

Business View Magazine - May 2016 127
“The company grew up as the area grew up,” Davidson
said.
“Where the D.C. area used to mean inside the beltway,
it’s now stretching out through Loudoun County (Va.),
which is where we do the bulk of what we do. The guys
through the years have had the same values as the
ones who started the company, and things have just
kind of grown from there.”
And though the full breadth of company expansion
may have been powered by circumstance, Davidson
said, a lot of it is directly traceable to the founder’s ini-
tial sense of the forces that would ultimately create an
environment in which a developer/home builder could
prosper.
“He certainly had a vision that government was a big
employer, and he was smart enough to realize that
people would move further away from the city to live in
suburbia,” he said.
“He had a vision for that. Just like he had a vision
when he moved to Loudoun County when it was all
gravel roads and everything, and his idea was to locate
real estate near the interstate and that people would
drive there for the right value. He knew enough about
the market to pick the right places where people were
going to relocate.”
Now, on the eve of its 60th birthday, the company
has divisions dedicated to construction of homes and
apartments, property development and management,
a mortgage/title operation and an offshoot that manu-
factures doors and windows – all of which combine for
a workforce of nearly 500.
Corporate headquarters are in Fairfax, Va. and David-
son said about 95 percent of company business is
done in Loudoun County, which is home to Washing-
ton Dulles International Airport and many tech-centric
firms that sprung up in the area in the first decade of
the new century. Addition of a toll road helped increase
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