Getting the balance right, with Andrew Thompson
Andrew is a founding partner of Fluent Property Pty Ltd, a boutique real estate advisory, investment and development business based in Brisbane. He started as an architect specialising in mixed-use projects in the USA and UK before joining Lendlease Development in Sydney. Over the last 19 years, Andrew has delivered some of Australia’s most significant development projects. He shares his passion for mixed-use developments and the challenges of the sector.
What do you love about cities?
Cities that I particularly like are ones that are unexpected and have pace – a sense of activity and purpose. The foundation for good cities is also a good sense of community and family.
What are things that made you want to be shaping cities?
After seven years working overseas as an architect, I returned home with experience in mixed-use planning which was steaming ahead in the UK. I fell into development, which I felt would allow me more scope to apply my design expertise in urban platforms.
What’s your most important project?
I’ve got a soft spot for West Village, which we worked on from scratch for five years because we were able to win the community over, despite their initial protests and court action. Now I hear people saying: “Andrew, this is so much better than we envisioned”. It’s a real credit to the team.
How did this project shape your professional practice?
One health hazard in the world of development is the emotional toll of dealing with community backlash when you are putting your heart and soul into a project. Getting the balance right with engagement is important as it is quite a dynamic and volatile space. This means consulting on plans at the right time – not too late or they can say: “Oh you’ve already come up with a plan”, and not too early or they can say: “Well, what are you doing? We can’t comment until we have seen it.” It requires resilience to work through expectations and bring people along with you.
“Getting the balance right with engagement is important as it is quite a dynamic and volatile space. ”
What are some of the key things you strive for on every project?
Fundamentally you must have a strong and convincing proposition for every project. Get that right and you will inherently add more value. In my mind that means three things: it has to have a community aspect for people to desire to be there; it has to address market forces; and the design has to provide an environment in which it is comfortable to live.
What are some of the key practices you draw upon to help you achieve these outcomes?
In my practice I keep asking myself: why will people come to this place versus elsewhere? If I’m building something like James St Teneriffe, I ask myself: “What would make people come here instead of James St?”. Constant interrogation drives great design. It is also important to be able to explain each development to investors in two seconds to capture their imagination and secure funding. Investors have many opportunities to fund other developments and we are competing in a global capital market, even in Brisbane.
To be a great ancestor for future generations, what does our sector need to focus on today?
It’s obvious in my mind: you've just got to build good places that people want to be now and in the future. In every master plan that I've been involved with, staging is a secondary or tertiary consideration at best. And some of the biggest projects underway are driving to an outcome that looks like now. More often, we need to use an evolutionary approach to development where we build lower density on a bigger scale and add more density if required over time. I think we would get a much more interesting city, a much more eclectic city, and it would mean less prescriptive planning.
What do we need to prioritize in our system to make that happen, more evolving, large scale regeneration type projects? What has to change?
I think there's got to be a support of risk takers. The community and authorities don't see developers as risk takers and believe whatever you build will be sold and you'll make lots of money out of it. If there was a way that authorities could share that risk profile, which is not too dissimilar to what Economic Development Queensland (EDQ) is doing yearly, I think that would be a really interesting play.
What's one piece of advice you would give to emerging urban leaders?
Don't assume that the stakeholders understand real estate. Start from first principles and spend the time to educate them, because I find once you've worked through the issues and explained openly what the challenges are and with compassion and with time and patience, you'll usually get to an outcome that works for both parties. And encourage your team as much as possible so they find creative resilience through obstacles.
