The Rosewood Ridge groundbreaking, a $19 million project, marked more than a year of navigating rezoning battles, community opposition, and a labyrinthine permitting process that would test the resolve of even the most seasoned developer. That Jett came out the other side, shovel in hand, speaks volumes about who she is. UrbanGeekz caught up with the visionary developer to discuss the journey that brought her here—and the vision driving her forward.

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From Courtroom to Construction Site

Jett’s path to real estate development was never a straight line. Growing up in Connecticut in a family she describes as “very poor,” she learned early that fixing things yourself wasn’t a hobby,  it was a survival skill. “I remember having to create a doorway in the middle of a wall where we busted out the drywall and cut out the framing and reframed it,” she recalls. “We created a doorway, access to the kitchen, so we didn’t have to go all the way around.”

That hands-on upbringing quietly shaped the developer she would become. But first, she attended Georgetown University Law School and joined a major Connecticut firm, intent on fulfilling the dream her family had rallied behind.

Medina Jett, founder and CEO of TDS Builders and TDS Capital

It was at that firm, in 1990, that a pivotal conversation changed everything. An older white partner, one of the few who took Jett under his wing as the only Black woman at the firm, pulled her aside during one of their mentoring lunches. “He told me that if I ever wanted to really be wealthy, I should invest in real estate,” Jett says. And, she took that advice to heart.

She began buying foreclosed properties on weekends, showing up at Saturday-morning auctions with a contractor in tow, bidding on homes others had walked away from. “Sometimes I would be the only person at the auction, and I would get the first bid,” she says. “Other times, there may be a few people, and sometimes somebody really wanted the house, they would just keep bidding until it didn’t really make financial sense.” She knew when to walk away.

“He told me that if I ever wanted to really be wealthy, I should invest in real estate.”

She did this all while building a respected legal career. Then, eventually left corporate law to start her own firm, and most of her clients were private equity and real estate investment funds. Watching those funds generate enormous returns from commercial real estate, from the vantage point of a legal advisor, lit a fire. “They’re making so much money doing this,” she recalls thinking. “I could be doing that too.”

In 2021, she sold her firm and went all in on real estate development full-time. “Now I’m kicking myself,” she laughs. “If life were a crystal ball, I wish I could have gone back in time and started doing this a long time ago. But better late than never.”

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TDS Builders and TDS Capital

“We’re not just building houses. We truly are building a legacy.” What makes TDS unique is how it’s structured. Most real estate investment firms raise capital and then hand it off to a third-party developer to execute the project. TDS does both in-house.

“We don’t have to rely on the expertise of some other developer,” Jett explains. “We don’t have to trust that another developer is going to do what they say they’re going to do because we are the developer.” She describes a cautionary tale she recently heard about a group of investors who sank money into a man claiming to be developing a subdivision. He was taking the money, she says, without even owning the land. “When we do an investment, we are the developer. We don’t have to have those issues.”

Attendees at the TDS Builders Rosewood Ridge groundbreaking

TDS Builders handles the on-the-ground development work. TDS Capital manages the asset side, raising investment capital from members of the Black community with a minimum entry point of $10,000, going up to $100,000 and beyond. Limited partners come in as passive investors and share in the returns.

“We’re not just building houses. We truly are building a legacy.”

“We create a way, not just for me and my family to make money, but for anybody in the Black community who wants to be a passive investor in our developments,” Jett says. “It ends up being a win for everybody.”

Transparency is a point of particular pride. Jett sends monthly reports to every investor, breaking down what’s happened over the previous 30 days. These include the challenges, the progress, and the numbers. “I hear from our investors all the time that it’s so unlike any other firm they’ve worked with,” she says. “We focus a lot on education. Most development companies are just trying to raise capital for their project, but they really don’t have that connection to who their investors are.”

“We don’t have to rely on the expertise of some other developer. We don’t have to trust that another developer is going to do what they say they’re going to do because we are the developer.”

That philosophy runs deeper than business strategy. Jett wants her investors to walk away from each deal not just wealthier, but also more financially literate. “We teach them all about the investment process … what a term sheet is, what the key parts of it are, what makes a good deal.” She wants that knowledge passed down to their children as well. “Our goal is not just to help Black people create wealth, but to help them create investment knowledge.”

She often returns to an African proverb to explain her model: “If you want to go fast, go alone. But if you want to go far, go together.”

The Road to Rosewood Ridge

The groundbreaking at Rosewood Ridge last month was a moment of visible triumph after an invisible war of attrition. Jett is candid about just how grueling the process was.

After acquiring the land in South Fulton, the team had to rezone it from single-family residential to a Community Unit Plan (CUP) designation suitable for a subdivision. That process alone took six months, two of which were spent managing community opposition.

“A lot of folks in the city weren’t in favor of any kind of construction because of the noise,” she says. “They were also concerned about an increase in their taxes … whenever you have a new development, property values go up, which most people like. But people on fixed income don’t care that their home values are going up. They just care that their tax rate is also going up.”

Jett and her team held a separate town hall and spent months meeting with residents one by one to get them on board. Eventually, the city council voted unanimously to approve.

Then came the land disturbance permit, and a masterclass in civil engineering that Jett never planned to take. The civil engineer had to map every inch of grading, every sewer line, every water line, and the full hydrology of the land.

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“There’s this thing called the hydrology of the land, which focuses on the flow of water when there’s a rainstorm and where that water is going to flow,” she explains. “You have to have detention ponds to capture that stormwater so it can slowly run off without flooding the neighborhood. It’s much more complicated than I ever imagined.” Between revisions, city engineer feedback, and resubmissions, the permit process alone took eleven months. She applied in May 2025 and received the land disturbance permit in April 2026.

“Nobody sees that part,” she says. “They only see when the houses start to show up.”

Rosewood Ridge commemoration

The name of the subdivision is not an accident.

Rosewood, Florida, was a thriving, Black-owned community. It had its own businesses, homes, and institutions. This was until 1923, when a white mob raided and burned it to the ground, killing residents and erasing decades of Black prosperity in a matter of days.

Jett chose that name deliberately. “By naming it Rosewood, we hope to commemorate and remember the Black community that was burned down,” she says. “This community is meant to signify a new birth of that city by a totally different generation, us remembering the past and using it to move ourselves forward.”

The two streets inside the subdivision, named through a contest open to TDS Capital investors, will be called Legacy Lane and Freedom Hill. “Those two words really signify what we stand for,” Jett says. “Creating legacies. And the freedom that, even to this day, we feel like we’re still fighting for.”

It is, she says, consistent with a broader commitment. That every community TDS develops will be named after a historical Black town or city in the U.S. that was destroyed by racism. The company’s mission statement says it plainly, “boldly building Black wealth.”

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Going Far Together

“If you want to go fast, go alone. But if you want to go far, go together.” With Rosewood Ridge underway and a 64-unit multifamily apartment community also in active renovation, TDS is scaling fast. Jett built that capacity deliberately by combining her 35-plus years of real estate experience with the legal and asset management expertise she honed as an attorney serving private equity clients.

“I have two different skill sets,” she says. “One is to develop real estate. The other is the legal and asset management side. I figured … why not marry the two?” The result is a company that can raise, manage, and deploy capital while simultaneously building the projects that capital funds.

For Black investors looking to participate in commercial real estate development, a space that has historically been inaccessible at the community level, TDS Capital offers a rare entry point. Those interested in joining the investor mailing list can reach out directly to be notified when the next investment opportunity opens.

After 36 years, Medina Jett has stopped doing real estate on the side. Now, she’s doing it loud.

TDS Builders and TDS Capital are actively seeking more Black investors interested in passive real estate investment opportunities. To express interest in joining the TDS Capital investor mailing list, connect with Medina Jett via LinkedIn.

Medina Jett (center) with daughters Sydni (left) and Taylor (right) at the Rosewood Ridge groundbreaking in South Fulton, Georgia

The post Meet the Mother-Daughter Team Expanding Black Wealth, One Subdivision at a Time appeared first on UrbanGeekz.