25 Back to life. Transforming a working quarry into a lush new neighbourhood

Local worth travelling for

For all its technical marvel and arresting beauty, from the naturally ventilated sawtooth roof to the edible blooms of the roof-top garden, it’s the human experience of Burwood Brickworks Shopping Centre that speaks the loudest.

“We have received hundreds, if not thousands, of comments and feedback from shoppers since we opened,” says Stephen. “And while some people do focus on the technical, such as solar energy and water or the recycling bins and waste reduction, overwhelmingly what people describe is their emotional response. They talk about the beauty and spirit of the place, its tranquillity and comfort.”

A lot of that is to do with good design that focuses on bringing fresh air into the centre and an abundance of natural light. Combined with green open space, both indoors and out, employees experience higher job satisfaction and employers have reported lower staff turnover.

“It’s simple things that make so much difference,” explains Stephen. “When staff have a beautiful area to go to in their breaks, instead of out on a noisy loading dock, their sense of wellbeing is just so much higher.” That increased job satisfaction has posed some tricky situations though. According to Stephen, some staff who have transferred from other stores to cover shifts for their colleagues, have shown some resistance in returning to their original place of work, so attractive are the working conditions at Burwood Brickworks. “It’s a good problem to have,” laughs Stephen.

When it comes to the shopper experience, there have also been unanticipated benefits. Stephen points to the redesign of supermarket refrigeration as a technical response to save energy consumption that has led to increased dwell time and shopper patronage.

Burwood Brickworks, VIC Burwood Brickworks, VIC

“If you look at the average shopping centre, half of the building’s energy usage could be refrigeration, because it never switches off. And that makes the supermarket generally a colder environment to be in. In winter, you need to pump hot air in to heat the space and it becomes this hugely expensive drain on energy.

“So, we worked with Woolworths to put doors on the fridges, capturing and pumping the heat from the back of the fridges to warm the store instead. It means the ambient temperature in the aisles is much more comfortable to linger in.

“In fact, I was chatting to a customer the other day and he was remarking that Burwood Brickworks is just a much more comfortable and pleasant place to shop. I asked him if he was a local and he said no, he was from Doncaster East. I remarked that there must be at least five supermarkets that would be closer to where he lives, and he said, ‘yes, but I prefer to shop at this one.’ So, that increased catchment area and dwell time in the store wasn’t why we redesigned the fridges to have doors, but that turned out to be one of the ancillary benefits of that decision.”

It takes a village

Achieving Living Building Challenge® Petal Certification at Burwood Brickworks took perseverance and partnership collaboration, not least of all with the centre retailers.

“We’re grateful to our family of retailers at Burwood Brickworks for embracing the Living Building Challenge®,” says Frasers Property Australia CEO, Anthony Boyd. “For some, the requirements of the Living Building Challenge® necessitated a complete re-imagining of their fitout and operations. And then, a few months after the centre’s opening, COVID-19 hit.” “And yet, our retailers showed inspirational perseverance and a commitment to collaboration that has been instrumental in Burwood Brickworks fulfilling its potential to become the world’s most sustainable shopping centre.

“The lessons we’ve learned through the Living Building Challenge® process, and the knowledge we’ve committed to sharing throughout the industry, will reveal new paths to better sustainability outcomes not only for our projects, but the industry at large.”

One tenant that plays a key role in meeting the Living Building Challenge® is acre Burwood, one of the largest urban agricultural projects in Australia.

Managing Director of acre, Luke Heard, says to be part of this major global sustainability achievement is a source of immense professional and personal satisfaction.

“This project is an example of individuals and organisations being willing to push the boundaries to unlock new sustainable possibilities. What we’ve learned on this journey will help not only our business, but other business operators and property development companies to make a positive impact on the places they occupy and the communities they’re a part of.”

To learn more about Burwood Brickworks and its Living Building Challenge® Certification visit:

frasersproperty.com.au/LivingBuilding-Challenge

Sizing up sustainable placemaking

Rory Martin has been in the sustainability space long enough to observe the word come in and out of vogue several times. As Sustainability Manager for Frasers Property Australia, he sees the company’s global commitment to ‘inspiring experiences, creating places for good’ as the core to a culture of innovation and collaboration with the potential to reshape placemaking as we know it.

When it comes to addressing the big environmental issues of our time, it’s easy for individuals to feel overwhelmed by the magnitude of the problem. But for Frasers Property Sustainability Manager Rory Martin, the path to creating smarter, greener, more resilient communities is best travelled with like-minded others.

“You know the saying ‘If you want to go fast, go alone; if you want to go far, go together,’ that’s how I see the challenge ahead,” says Rory. “And while people may assume – quite fairly – that property development is a pretty competitive sector; in the sustainability sphere we tend to be much more interested in the bigger picture. If I come up with a way to design a carbon neutral home, for example, it makes more sense for me to share that technology with other builders, than keep it to myself and limit the ability to affect change at a more significant scale.”

The recent recognition of Burwood Brickworks Shopping Centre as the most sustainable shopping centre in the world is a case in point. Since launching its audacious goal of achieving the International Living Future Institute’s Living Building Challenge® and recently achieving Petal Certification, the phone has rung hot from industry peers keen to peek under the hood and understand how Frasers Property are bringing their vision to life.

“I don’t think there’s any bigger compliment or confirmation of your leadership position than to have industry colleagues want to learn and emulate the successes we’ve achieved,” says Rory. “And the reality is that we don’t achieve any of this on our own. We have always collaborated with the best partners, consultants, governments and authorities to continually push the envelope. Places like Burwood Brickworks raise the bar in terms of what’s possible, but if there’s only ever one like it, we probably haven’t done our job that well.”

Minnippi Quarter, QLD A focus on building resilient neighbourhoods through technical innovation in the sustainability sphere is nothing new for Frasers Property. The company has a long history of leading the conversation at an industry level and in recent years has pledged an ambitious target to become a fully carbon zero business by 2050. A culture of experimentation has meant Rory and other members of the Frasers Property sustainability team have had the licence and latitude to test new ideas and technologies across the range of Frasers Property projects.

“There’s no question that never settling for the thing we did yesterday is a huge part of Frasers DNA,” explains Rory. “We were one of the first in the industry to make a concerted commitment to delivering 5 and 6 Star Green Star buildings, and as a result we’re recognised as one of the most prolific developers of Green Star properties in the country. But we’ve never accepted Green Star as the beginning and end of our obligation. We’ve always stretched ourselves to do and achieve so much more.”

With a view that there’s no one-size-fits-all approach, Rory points to a range of Frasers Property projects that achieve sustainability at various scales. Taking a leaf from a concept that’s familiar to the architecture world, he calls it the Small, Medium, Large and Extra-Large approach to designing neighbourhoods that balance environmental outcomes with inspiring experiences for the humans who live, work, shop, and belong there.

Sustainability is not a one-size-fits-all approach.

Small: Point Cook’s Passivhaus

Situated within one of Frasers Property Australia’s most popular neighbourhoods in south-west Melbourne, there stands a house that’s designed to be comfortable to live in most of the year round, with very little heating and cooling intervention required. With a design based on German Passivhaus principles, the Life, Point Cook home uses features such as double-glazed windows, continuous thermal insulation and airtight measures to reduce air leakage, better regulate temperature control in the house and drastically reduce heating and cooling costs, while improving air quality.

As the first Passivhaus built by a volume builder in the country, the performance of the home based on its design, orientation, and fabrication could make new homes much more energy efficient and comfortable to live in if the design principles are adopted en masse by the building industry.

“It’s a pretty exciting moment for us,” says Rory. “We designed two virtually identical homes at Life, Point Cook – one being a standard house and the other built with Passivhaus principles. Using little monitors around the homes, we’ll collect data about the energy performance over the next 12 months and be able to measure the reductions in energy usage and the home’s ability to retain and regulate a more natural internal climate without the everyday need for heating or air conditioning. What we learn we’ll feed back to our colleagues in the industry so that future home building can benefit from what we’ve learned.” Medium: Minnippi Quarter’s Build Neutral initiative

Taking its cues from the airline industry, Frasers Property’s sustainability team recently trialled a new carbon offset initiative, ‘Build Neutral’ at their Minnippi Quarter community in Brisbane. In addition to on-site solar generation and the opportunity to buy renewable energy through Frasers Property-owned Real Utilities power network, purchasers of new homes at Minnippi Quarter were given the opportunity to purchase an offset equivalent to the carbon impact of the materials and construction of their homes.

“This one was a simple little initiative with a really positive result,” says Rory. “As this was a trial, we had fairly modest goals for uptake but well exceeded those. And even better, it opened up some great conversations with buyers about what they were trying to achieve in their own lives when it came to living with a lighter footprint. I recall one guy that told us that he and his partner opted into offsetting their home, not because they’re hard-core greenies, but because he wanted to create a legacy for his daughter and teach her through the new home what was going on in the world. And if that’s not combining sustainable living with creating an experience that can inspire the next generation, I don’t know what is.”

Passivhaus, VIC

Artists’ impression Ed.Square, NSW

Large: Central Place Sydney

At the larger end of the scale are the ambitious plans for renewal of the Railway Square precinct adjacent to Sydney’s Central Station, by Frasers Property Australia in partnership with Dexus. Christened Central Place Sydney, the redevelopment will transform the southern end of the CBD into a world-class business and technology precinct. The $2.5 billion project, with jaw-dropping architectural designs by international design team Fender Katsalidis and Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, will be one of the most sustainable commercial developments in Australia with a workplace environment that will benefit from a ‘breathable’ building design.

“Central Place Sydney is really a perfect project that encapsulates ‘inspiring experiences, creating places for good,’ says Rory. “The way the workspaces and retail spaces will be connected by indoor gardens and terraces, the way the building will relate to the environment to maximise natural light while at the same time protecting it from heat gain, it’s really smart and innovative architectural thinking. The experience and wellbeing of the tech workers that will work there will be a world away from sitting in a dark little cubicle, starved of light and atmosphere. Watch this space.” Extra Large: Ed.Square, Edmondson Park

And then there are the extra large-scale, fully self-contained urban villages like Ed.Square in Sydney’s south west. A 6 Star Green Star-rated community, the neighbourhood is emblematic of Frasers Property’s dedication to sustainable and wellbeing initiatives that directly benefit the residents that live there.

These include water efficiency through dual plumbing, smart fixtures, and use of reclaimed water; solar energy captured from the roofs of the town centre and new homes; an entirely walkable design where every home is within 400 metres of Ed.Square Town Centre, and parks and bushland are dotted through and around the community to encourage walking and community connections.

“Ed’s always been a project that’s been pushing the boundaries of what’s possible,” says Rory. “To bring that much self-contained amenity and walkability to that part of Sydney was already a game-changer. But then add to that the sustainability initiatives and the partnership we’ve established with ARENA (the Australian Renewable Energy Agency) to deliver 51 net zero energy homes at Ed.Square, and the community is a real benchmark for how to do this kind of thinking at scale.”

Dubbed Balanced Energy Homes (BE.Homes), the zero energy initiative aims to expand the industry knowledge of renewable energy technology so these innovations can be refined and developed to elevate the energy performance of Australian housing.

“It might sound a bit geeky,” concedes Rory, “but the data we’re able to capture from initiatives like BE.Homes at Ed.Square, Build Neutral at Minnippi Quarter, Passivhaus at Point Cook, thermal heating and cooling at Fairwater, rooftop solar at Burwood Brickworks, plus all the other projects where we have sustainability actions in place, we have this incredible dataset at our fingertips. For those of us working in sustainability, it’s like being given the keys to the toy chest, and something we’ll be looking to share lessons about with the wider industry.”

Property Management

made personal

The words ‘property management’ — like ‘insurance policy’ or ‘financial planning’ — don’t tend to spark excitement in our everyday language. Largely viewed as a necessary evil for landlords and renters alike, Frasers Property Australia’s Richard Kemp says the key to successful property management is to understand it’s less about property and more about relationships.

If you’re an investor, renter, or interested bystander, it’s no secret that the property market has been on a wild ride in the last two years. The onset of COVID-19 created enough uncertainty for the market to stall and catch its breath for a minute. Then take off again in a truly astonishing trajectory that defied all predictions.

For investors and renters, the game changed in unexpected ways. With the flight of international students and expats back to their home countries, rents in the capital cities declined. Conversely, rents in the regions grew off the back of a migration of folks out of the cities and into smaller towns during a time when commuting for work became redundant.

For those left managing the relationship between landlords and renters, the bumpy conditions separated the wheat from the chaff.

Richard Kemp has been at the helm of Frasers Property Australia Property Management division since its inception in 2012. He says, despite the ups and downs in the property market, the last two years have been unprecedented growth years for the company’s property management business. Key to that has been an end-toend service relationship with a single brand focused on life-long value, rather than the shortterm transactional nature of most property management functions. “When we opened our doors nine years ago, it was largely a response to growth in our investor business,” explains Richard. “Frasers has always had a healthy customer base of investors, including those that were themselves residents of our communities and trusted the Frasers brand. A lot were looking for an end-to-end service that just took the hassle out of managing their investment properties.”

And for Omar Marial, an investor at Frasers Property’s Ed.Square, his experience has been exactly that. “Frasers essentially look after everything from top to bottom for me. It’s very straightforward in that I’m covered in every aspect – the only thing I need to worry about is making sure my payments are on time. It’s very easy for anyone to start their property investment journey with Frasers in that respect.”

Specialised knowledge and care

While building up a modest property portfolio is the dream of many Australians, the excitement and potential of investing can quickly be dampened with the amount of work that has to go into finding a trusted property manager. One that will work hard to ensure landlords have the right tenants, rents are properly optimised, and that their properties are being cared for as if they were their own.

Ed.Sqaure, NSW

Richard Kemp, National Property Manager, Frasers Property