Grow Places

GP 51: Place Personality: with Denz Ibrahim of Legal & General IM

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In this insightful episode of the Grow Places Podcast, Tom Larsson sits down with one of the most forward-thinking voices in the UK real estate sector – Denz Ibrahim of Legal & General.  As Head of Futuring & Place, Denz shares how he and his team are turning traditional development models on their head by embedding creativity, community, and customer-centric design into every layer of placemaking.

We dive into Foundry, Legal & General’s innovative co-working and micro-enterprise platform that’s bringing underused spaces in town centres and new residential neighbourhoods to life. From repurposed job centres in Poole to high street rejuvenation in Wandsworth, Denz explains how Legal & General is curating ground-floor experiences that boost retention, attract independents, and generate holistic value.

Discover how long-term thinking, community programming, and the power of local businesses can create places with true character and soul — not just commercial assets. This episode covers:

  • Rethinking retail and residential ground floors as dynamic, community-led environments
  • The shift from passive landlord to active place curator
  • The role of data, partnerships, and programmatic use in creating value
  • Real-world stories from Eastbourne, Hove, Walthamstow, Bromley, and more
  • Why place personality matters — now more than ever

This is a must-listen for anyone working in regeneration, BTR, asset management, or urban design — or anyone who simply cares about how we build better places.

SPEAKER_00:

Hello and welcome to the Grow Places Podcast, where we explore the virtuous circle of people, growth and place. Brought to you by Grow Places and hosted by our founder, Tom Larson.

SPEAKER_01:

Having me here at the Foundry, which is a super amazing space, part of an incredible development here. And a great starting point probably for our conversation today about activation of places, place making, place growth, people. And so before we jump into it, why don't you give a bit of an intro to yourself?

SPEAKER_02:

Of course. Well, thanks for inviting me on to your podcast, Thomas. Really appreciate it. So my name's Denz Ibrahim. I am the head of featuring and plays for Legal in General. And I also sit on the board of Foundry, which we, as you said, co-founded with it, was Legal and General co-founded with Adam Walker about two and a half years ago, as the home of microenterprise for Legal in General. I do two things essentially with those two hats on. So the first thing within the Future Places team within Legal in General. We are a essentially a placemaking hub in the heart of the private markets business and real estate equity business of uh Legal and General. Um and we essentially look after or are responsible for everything on the ground floor that touches the customer. So it could be reinventing and rethinking town centres such as shopping centres or retail forks, but it's also about creating and and future-proofing uh neighborhoods in the heart of our residential communities and the the the you know the the regeneration component of the bit of the business. Um and the foundry bit is a is a strong connection to that, um, which is uh a essentially a co-working business originally. You know, it's a co-working business tapping into creating enterprise space in the heart of under underserved communities across the UK. Our first ones being in a storage room and a shopping center in Eastbourne, uh a vacant job center in Paul, um, and then the the the the the last two being in um BTR assets, Waterhamstone and Wandsworth. But it was all about how do you create space that we have more control over, that we have understanding of how they operate, how our customers behave, but also having the ability to diversify their assets, not just around shopping, but also around working, what it could be healthcare, it could be wellness. So it was a real connection point between, you know, creating a placemaking strategy with the foundry at the heart.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, yeah, amazing. And um, actually it's quite uh a nice segue because the way you you ended that was where I was going to go next, which is I think it's fascinating that uh, you know, a big investment management entity like legal in general are are also you know taking stakes in and becoming operators as well. Um, because there is often a disconnect sometimes between you could say the money and the operations and and integrating that through, I think is is fascinating. You know, what we're doing at Truewood Brewery with the owner operator there, they they have such a unique perspective because they do actually operate businesses within their own estate and it gives you that firsthand experience, doesn't it? So yeah, so maybe I don't know if there's any sort of things that come to mind when you say, okay, well, maybe your approach, maybe personally or or uh I am pre-the foundry and post-the-foundry, like does anything come to mind?

SPEAKER_02:

Uh I guess I'd give you the reason why, right? Because so I joined Lebeland General five years ago, four and a half, five years ago, originally as head of retail. And my brief was completely reinvent and rethink how we do retail in the business, both culturally, you know, how do we approach shops, streets, and really think about that as a as an asset management business. Um, but also spatially, how do we feature proof our spaces? And for me, coming, I'm a designer by background, I'm not a real estate guy. So uh the lens of the customer was really important to the narrative that we created and the philosophy that we created. And that philosophy was based on basically five pillars. And I'll come on to the question on why in a minute. But the context being that you know, the five pillars were one, being much more customer-centric, so being less of a passive landlord, being much more involved and being agile and responsive to the to the market, but also to what the customer wants. Two, being much more data focused and ensuring that we are responsive to what the data's giving us. Three was about diversification, so diversification of one, the mix, but also the the um the revenue streams. So we were de-risking that environment. Um, and then there was a there was a piece around partnership. And the partnership piece was again going back to the customer-centric bit, was no longer was it around tenants and landlord, but much more around partnerships. And if we built that rapport and that connection with our occupiers, we had a lot more, a better chance um being much more agile within our within within our environments and and our and our approach. So Foundry as an operational business was part of that DNA, right? Because it's uh the idea was, you know, if you if you have a lot more um control, you have a lot more agility, you have a lot more ability to respond to the customer, you are responding essentially to where I think retail got a bit lost or where the ground floor got a bit lost. It all became a bit too samey-samey. It became cookie-cutter in environments which were had their back to the towns and had their back to existing communities. So having the operational control, having the curatorial ability to deliver the right content to the right people allowed us, as I guess, on the backdrop of a pretty traditional landlord, you know, the ability to have a lot more involvement and a lot more productivity. So Foundry was the catalyst to that, but we also did other products. So we've got a product called Gather, which is our own events program product. So we hire curators in the middle of our shopping centers to curate community events. On average, we have around a thousand a year that happen. They could be charity events, it could be fashion events, it could be pizza and prosecco, but it's about bringing new types of people to those environments. We also run our own markets, so supporting global community to bring markets in the heart of shopping centres or the heart of retail parks, and soon to be the heart of residential environments. So foundry is definitely a component to that, but we are having much more involvement in how we curate our environments to ensure they stay running.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, yeah, fascinating. And then what are the learnings that come out of that that kind of feedback in this sort of loop that I'm assuming you you have internally, which is from you know, top-down investment value creation narrative, build-out learnings. How how do you see that?

SPEAKER_02:

So there's it's it's hard to answer that question when you're talking about multiple different environments. So let's let's think about the residential environment as a pocket, right? Because shopping centres have a different value metric, retail parks, and uh they're all a slightly different story. But if you start thinking about the why we do this within residential, it goes back to the the, I guess the argument that I make is the biggest risk of real estate is a commoditization of real estate. So the idea that value is a much more holistic value when we talk about this. We don't look at the value as this one shop on the ground floor with residential. We look at the value as an overarching piece. So you have in this particular environment in New Acres, in Wandsworth, which is a built-to-rend um asset, um, we have a thousand flats, 30% uh affordable, but we've got 50,000 square foot of commercial. So actually, the way we see the commercial playing a part in this isn't the ERV and the rent that we're generating from that one shop. It's what's the what's the vertical value it's giving us? How does it drive retention for our residents upstairs? How does it drive occupancy? How do we make sure that the the the investment our investors have put in there, we give them a long-term view on that and a long-term investment uh value piece on that. But then also there's a horizontal value. And that horizontal value is about how do you bring in the existing community. And um, that's really important when you're building relationships with local authority, with local customers and local people. It's not just this new thing that lands in the middle of this environment. So having much more control of that ground floor and ensuring that you're delivering rents and you're delivering value by turnover deals, by um the right mix, by ensuring they have the right social media campaigns, um, the right programmatic component to the shops and also the public realm allows us to create a holistic value proposition that that is really unique and is connected throughout the whole asset, as opposed to, I guess, the old way of going, okay, there's a there's a there's a box here, we have to fill it with an occupier that wants that style of box. It's going to give us this amount of rent a year, but actually it might not mean anything to the people above, and therefore they can go and live anywhere else and get the same experience. So it has to be seen as a as a as connecting the dots, in my view.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, really interesting. And is that the kind of would you say that's quite a good description of what you think of as a future place then? Kind of something with it if we're in that in terms of maybe a value proposition.

SPEAKER_02:

Sure, sure. A hash project. It just has it has to be completely customer-centric. So understanding what the customer wants, what the resident wants, um, what the community wants, um, and and then therefore curating that um and delivering a great place where people want to live, want to work, want to shop, want to play. Um, and that that could be that could be uh numerous different reasons, but the the the key here is is it can't be um it can't be fadic, it can't be like really good and really relevant today and and next year, but actually it it falls out of fashion a little bit. And if you think about the customer that we're trying to um that we're aiming for, or the customer that I guess engages this type of environment, they are ever more demanding, ever more trend driven, and therefore we have to be agile as landlords. You know, I always talk about this notion that the big the hardest job for real estate is, you know, especially within retail, is you've got this pretty fixed, inflexible world of property, often driven by spreadsheets in a tower in London, trying to deliver environments to a really nomadic, evolving, um, ever-changing and ever-demanding customer base. And I guess my job and my team's job is to try and find that equilibrium, trying to find that balance constantly where we are delivering the right kind of value to our investors, to our uh peers, uh sorry, our our our our peers internally, our fund managers, um, but also um ensuring they create relevant places for the people that are going to use them and the people that are gonna live here as well.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, and then how do you because some of the examples you mentioned of your uh five existing foundries and a couple more coming, you know, they're not all just in London, are they? They're in there in different places across the UK. Um how has that come about? Has that been um something which is is is led by the BTR strategy and then you're kind of um sort of supporting that? Or are you sort of is the foundry kind of uncovering neighborhoods and then is kind of splitting as well then the uh the the business case for the for the BTR?

SPEAKER_02:

So Foundry is an exclusive product for League in General. Um it was all out of, as I said, tapping into the micro enterprise community, which was historically a community or business that we never tapped into at League in General. So having the ability, so doing that one, two also tapping into geographical areas where historically there wasn't these kind of environments in those areas, so underserved communities, underserved enterprise communities. So the there's no doubt the first couple were based off of essentially shopping centres, us trying to fit into that strategy, that philosophy that I was talking about around diversification. So if we want to bring people into shopping centres for different reasons, we want to drive dwell time, drive footfall, drive a different experience, you have to bring in workspace, you have to bring in healthcare, education. That really um delivers growth and ability for the secondary use, which is the retail piece as well. So the the shopping center component of Foundry was born out of how do you diversify a shopping center? Uh so the foundry bit was about diversifying a shopping centre. Um, but then the residential piece was about harnessing and delivering community from day one. So if you think about Wandsworth, where we're sitting today, this was opened midway through the flats and the build-to-rent component being occupied. So around 50%, 60% of it was occupied when Foundry came. Suddenly there was activation on the ground floor. The remaining 4,900 other activated ground floor spaces hadn't opened yet or haven't yet opened and will be over the next six months. But Foundry was the catalyst to create that ground floor animation and activations. Um and it definitely brought the community together, not because it sold desks, not because it rented desks, but because there was Vancouver's, there was TED Talks, there was um art classes, there was lots of different programmatic elements which engaged the residents, engaged the wider community, and essentially put this new pocket of city on the map. And Foundry did that because it was essentially trying to engage in the customers, of course, but it was trying to embed itself in the community. Um and as a as a from a from a legal and general point of view, that was a real benefit for us because suddenly it became a place brand. It became its own, its own uh, had its own identity in a way, um, even before we'd opened one shop, you know, and that's now it's actually teed us up for the next six months where we're going to be opening these independent shops, um, and and able to determine what the customer actually wants, have a narrative, a dialogue with the customer first and foremost.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, it's fascinating. You kindly showed me around before we do this. It's an amazing space. And if people should come and have a look if they haven't already, and um, you know, lots of people working in different settings, yeah, individuals, um, entrepreneurs, startups, uh, up to kind of enterprise units. And um, so and and you're I know you're personally yourself here at least a couple of days a week. You know you're kind of here as well as being um in town. And so so those kind of coffee machine moments here, the conversations that you pick up with with people who are using the space. Is there anything that kind of comes to mind about how they describe it as opposed to how you conceived it?

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, so I I I guess unfortunately I'm not as close to the details. I wish I was. We've got an up, we've got a great team who operate these environments day to day. Um and I wish I was here two days a week. Unfortunately, I'm not. But um the one thing that we set out to do when we when we uh Adam Walter and and uh and myself and the team um created Foundry was we wanted to create a a workspace which was community, and I know it's an overused term, but community and program led first. It was again going back to that notion of the commoditization of space. You know, if you think about retail got lost because of cookie-cutter shops and high streets and hermetically sealed shopping centers, um, you know, offices, you know, have a risk of all looking the same, suspended ceilings, the same kind of tile floor, and quite um uh cosmetic environments. Um, how do you make a workspace where people really value working and connecting really human? And you do that through a couple of things. You do that through really great customer service, like it feels like a hospitality uh approach rather than a real estate approach. You do that by having a true community program, and you'll see the team behind me who are completely embedded in that. And that's they're the ones that create those serendipitous moments where people connect. You know, I've heard examples of people who have co-working desks and that actually they realize their businesses aligned, so they go and rent an office between themselves and share the cost and they grow together. You know, you hear these stories quite frequently, and that's I think because of the design of creating public realm which allows people to connect and network, but also the programmatic element of creating events which allow people to network and and and and uh cross-fertilise ideas and and deliver, I guess, local growth as well, which which comes from the design, comes from the idea. And we're definitely seeing that um come to fruition. You also got to remember that um because of the diversification of geographies that Founder sits in, the rhythms are completely different. You know, you you go from the first one was in Eastbourne, you know, seaside, relatively small seaside town. The second one was in Pool, which was uh uh uh in the heart of a shopping centre, you know, extremely creative town, um and and you know, very different rhythm, a lot more extracurricular stuff happening by the sea. Then you had Wolframstow, which had a very East London vibe. This one, Wandsworth, we're into today, is is equally as different, but actually resonates a lot more like Paul, which is quite interesting. The latest one we've opened is in Hove, again, very different vibe, very different rhythm. Um it's a slightly older demographic of user, which is quite interesting. So that changes the type of programming that we have there. Um, and then the latest one, which is a completely different um uh type of waffle, is in Bromley in Southeast London, which is actually um uh trying to reinvent makers space and workshop space within that enterprise sector. So the because of the varying geographies, that also changes how people use the space. It isn't just about renting a test program office, that's the byproduct. It's about what you get as part of being the foundry network, which which is what people are really loving, and that's the stickiness, I think, that that differentiates it from other other other operators, other environments that you want to work in.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, yeah, really interesting. And um, and you mentioned there this idea about kind of local growth and neighborhood and and those terms which are very aligned with how we talk about places and and that for us, we talk about place growth, which is this kind of sort of idea of of essentially kind of bottom-up kind of growth of a neighborhood that is partly related to what you do within your development or your operating business, but it's very much about the neighbourhood as it stands today, that kind of its legacy that's had and then kind of its place looking forwards. And how can how can, as you say, how can that the local growth be something that the development benefits from and the investors who own the development, but also you know has a kind of um a networking effect locally to to create some local growth. So are there any kind of examples that come to mind uh of that or learnings that you think you've had from from kind of coming in maybe Wandworth or Wolferslow or any of those other locations about that sort of knitting in with the neighborhood?

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, of course. I I I think because we're sitting in Wandsworth and Mind Louacres, it feels it feels really, really prevalent to talk about this one. And it's a really exciting project actually. And we're we're we're talking about this now at literally the cuff of everything about to open over the next three to four months. So let me give some context and then talk about that question um a bit more in detail with a particular project within this project that we did. So new acres, uh onesworth, as I said, deal-to-rem development, thousand flats, 30% affordable, uh, and then we've got around 50,000 square foot of ground floor commercial. That includes 14,000 square foot of foundry, which was been open, it's been open a year. Um that, I guess, is the catalyst community hub, should we say, um, and that is around 70, 80% occupied now. So we're we're we're way way ahead of where we thought we would be. It's been a real success. Um, and out of that 50,000 square foot, we've got roughly around 49, 49 to 50 independent businesses opening over the next three to four months. So we believe it's probably one of the first new build developments completely dedicated to independent brands. For us, an independent brand is your first shop, your second shop, or a relocation. So, and it's really truly mixed. There's one exception, we have a Waitrose, which opened today. That's the only exception that isn't uh uh an independent, but the remaining 48 others are independents. Um, and in terms of the mix, you know, we've got essentially with Foundry two other anchors, let's call it. We've got a makers space, so makers labs, uh, which is going to be 18 studios for makers and workshops and production. We've got 14 studios for wellness and practitioners, um, and then dotted around that, roughly 20 to 22 other boutique independent businesses. So that could be dog runers, pottery studios, taco shacks, it could be a barbershop hairdresser, a bookshop, a real village neighborhoodly feel. And then we've got a Sunday market, which will open every Sunday, um, a designer makers market, which will go through the public realm program, that. And one brief that we set was that because we're creating a brand new neighborhood, and I guess my particular beef with new new regen sites is this ability, one, to call it a destination because no one wants to live in a destination, but two, how do you design the rhythms so it never feels like either a ghost town or ridiculously busy? So these two spectrums of the places that no one wants to live, right? People don't want people want to visit there but then leave. So our job is to make sure we have a constant hum. So what was really important for us is that the mix was right, so it was curated right, but also most brands had a programmatic component to them. So if you are an ice cream parlor, you have ice cream making classes, the pottery studio has pottery making classes, we've got events and poetry sessions and book signings in the bookshop. So you get the gist. The idea is that we'll have constantly different events and different things happening which harness that community component. And we tested that, and it goes back to the question. We tested that before anything even opened with a pop-up that we called the next, which was the new acres experience. And that was in uh one of our shops, uh just a bit further down from here. And that that unit was about how do you create the physical manifestation of the New Acres experience before anything's opened and it's a building site. And how do you how do you do that without calling it a marketing suite, basically, you know? And the the the what we decided to do was we essentially had a 2,000 square foot space. We split it up into three sections. The first section was what we called Cafe 404. It was run by a local resident who at the time I think was living in flat 404. Um, and that was essentially the the community hub. You can pick up a coffee, you can go and worl at the UF3 Wi-Fi, you had a meeting room if you wanted to use it, but don't forget this was a building site and you had this space which was constantly lively and buzzing. There was a run club that happened weekly, I think, um, and comedy sessions and poetry. And that was curated in a really interesting way. Next then was the pre-foundry, so you had free workspace for the residents for the local community to come and use a pre-foundry before this space was opened. Um, and that was a real catalyst to put foundry on the map in this local area. I think we opened this with around 20 to 25 pre-lep because of that space. And then next to that, which was really excited about, is we did a collaboration with the Royal College of Art, which is a World Win and United Design School, um, which is also based in not too far from here itself. And the Royal College of Art used that space to be a teaching space for architectural students, for uh sculptor, sculpting uh masters students, um, alumni space, but they also used it as a a way to embed the creative community in the heart of this. And that was really important for me, I guess. As a creative, I really believe that we could set a trend here that if we embedded a bunch of creative minds into this space, actually it will percolate and have a ripple effect to deliver some sort of culture that we wanted to retain. And that was for one year, that space. And we had a pop-up pub open, we had multiple events, we had sculpting classes happen. The uh the sculpting group took waste from the building site here and created sculptures, which they then sold um and and exhibited. Um, once Foundry opened here, we bought a reformer Pilates studio, which was going to open here to activate the space. So suddenly what happened was we had this space which was beautifully designed, but it was a place that behaved a bit like a community cafe, acted as a workspace during the daytime, and then also embedded a creative community that people felt like they can go and be part of. And that was the catalyst for us to talk to the customer, talk to the future customers, talk to the existing residents. We had a wall out where it said, tell us what you want in this space. It was truly customer curated. And I guess that was our take on how do you deliver something which doesn't feel like it's turning its back onto the existing uh fabric of of the city, but also ensuring that it's future ready and it's it has the ability to remain relevant. So that I guess was our was our take on it. Um and it was a huge success. And we're we're gonna build a partnership with the RCA and move them hopefully to the makerspace if we can. Um and we're gonna we're gonna um uh of course move Foundry and the Hill, which we've done, um, and then build out the cafe uh community piece within with our uses across across the the the the asset itself.

SPEAKER_01:

Oh well it's great, uh great to fully appreciate all of that, as you say, because there's there's a huge amount in all of that which is super valuable to to the neighborhood, but also to to you as as the as the owner operator. And um and what you've described there is something that is incredibly kind of iterative and and maybe follows a number of different paths, and you don't necessarily quite know where it's going to go or control it. And uh it's led very much by the people and and the local businesses that you those independence that you described. It's completely grassroots, yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

You know, that's what that that's that was the philosophy. The philosophy was how do you make this from the ground up, as opposed to us telling how we curate this, how we activate this? It was very, very engaged in that sense.

SPEAKER_01:

So so then for you and then so inside inside IM, did someone just put a load of trust in you to go and do this, or how did you kind of justify this? Because that's all what you're doing is is super grassroots, as you say, but you're you're also operating within a you know a big large entity. So how how how have you had to manage that process? Because I'm sure people would be interested in in understanding how you go about turning these things from a kind of theory to practice, really.

SPEAKER_02:

Sure, sure. So, you know, it takes time and it's and it's I'm very lucky that I've got a business that has a huge amount of trust in what we're doing and why we're doing it. Um, but obviously you have to prove the why. Um and it started as when we were in the retail space alone, when we delivered a a street called Kingland in in Paul, which therefore drove dwell time, drove footfall. We could became very it became very evident very quickly when we started doing these initiatives within the town centers, and they were working, they were driving diversification of income, they were driving dwell time footfall, they were getting featured in and in articles in titles like the New York Times, in Vogue Vogue in um in the Times, in lots of different titles that historically a shopping center in the South Coast would never really be featured in. Um, and we saw the customers were responding well, we saw that the occupiers really wanted to be part of this, and actually we were we were we were doing something quite interesting and different. But what became very evident as a business is that this was really relevant across our platform. So actually, it became even more intrinsic in our residential strategy because actually it was human-centric, it was completely people first. Um I have to caveat that we are legal in general, we have a long-term view, we we are I I I think that's our superpower. We are about delivering um value to our investors um for the long term. Um an environment like this isn't about a quick exit, it's about making sure that we create sustainable long-term impact um across our the communities that we land in. So we have got that lens, right? That's massively important. Yes, not to overlook that. For sure, for sure. But therefore, our value metric is very different. Our value metric goes back to that holistic value that I was talking about. This is not about 2,000 square foot that we've activated for free. You know, that 2,000 square foot has got this 49 shops fully let before we've even opened because it was a it was the North Star where we wanted to get to. And people would walk into that space and go, ah, I get what you're talking about. It's not just some fancy presentation from me saying this is what we're gonna do, and no one really believes us. So it was the it expedites a lot of the the the vision, the strategy because we're creating this stuff and people are touching and feeling it, and we're naturally seeing the value and and and the benefits because we've got a really successful BTR and a component to this, which is where the majority of the value is, and therefore we're allowed to do stuff which is really interesting on the ground floor.

SPEAKER_01:

And then and then so so whether it's you or whether it's colleagues, are you Do you have a kind of a method of of quantifying that value over the longer term? But it is it is it as simple as kind of what all you're doing here kind of effectively just increases the underlying value of the BTR and that is the investment case, or are you actually valuing um yeah, what happened in these spaces or the ground floor in a special way?

SPEAKER_02:

So value can mean also are you talking if we're talking about in that sense I was thinking real estate, but if we're talking about real estate value, you know, if you get the story right, so we also got to remember what we're playing with here, right? You know, we had an asset here on the ground floor that when I inherited the plan had around 10 shops, had a very busy A road running through it, had a pretty uh hard line between, I guess, what was the busy street and us. Um, and we had a pretty um tough uh uh kind of barrier to the north side as well. So it wasn't it wasn't a slam dunk, you know, uh and and what we what we try to do and what we're trying to do is to say that the if you get the story right, if you create a narrative that is resonating with the existing community and the customers that you want to attract in in the residents upstairs and you write you find the right partners to deliver this. By the way, we don't use retail agents. We use curators, designers, editors who talk the language of our brands, you're able to get a and we split it into 50 activated spaces as opposed to 10, which we are now fully let in before we've even opened. Because we're in legals in most of these units and and some of them are opening now. You know, the value of that is that we are getting um uh activation from day one. It's not rent from day one because they're rent-free for the first year, it's turnover only for the second year. So we've create packages which give the startups a leg up. But by year three, once they're mature, actually we're seeing a fully activated, a fully let space on the ground floor that is on plan to to what um the the real estate guys were putting together. If you really think about if we did this the traditional way, the majority of this would be vacant when it's opened and we'll have a series of national brands that would come here that would look like every other space and therefore we wouldn't differentiate our environment with anything else and therefore would have a domino effect on retention, on place love we call it you know and and and have the ability to not have not have the story that people want to be part of. And you know I I think that there is a direct value metric which is we're gonna be getting um uh a series of successful brands paying their rent and hopefully staying um and therefore we're gonna have a a series of residents that are going to be really happy because they're living on a really activated dynamic exciting ground floor that is buzzing with energy um the the risk to this is that sometimes you get startups that don't succeed and sometimes we we do expect sure you know but if you get the story right you've got a series of brands in the waiting list which we have who will be able to take that and actually I don't mind that because that is about evolution that is about agility that is about freshness and and that is really key for us. It's really important. I got answered your question.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah yeah no really really well um absolutely and and I agree often the traditional way of doing it is to put a rent on as you say large units at the ground floor that rent is often um unachievable for the type of you know units and and operators that you'd like to get in. So it becomes something that is is seen as always seen as a negative or kind of the noose around the neck of a project as opposed to what you're describing which is this completely different approach uh and then much better from an investment perspective but also in creating better places and communities for people.

SPEAKER_02:

So yeah I think you you summarise that brilliantly and um could just add on to that on because that that's the real estate value right there's also the other value and I don't know what that's called but it could be behavioral it could be digital but what we end up getting because of that is because we have a series of partners who are doing this with us, not for us, right? They're not tenants, they are doing this with us. We get all or most of the turnover data. We have the ability to track and measure all of the social media behavior and activity we manage and work out what does customer behavior look like and suddenly we've got a piece of insights that we have of a whole neighborhood that historically we would never have had. So we understand role time footfall spend where our customers are going to visit in other parts of the borough and when they're coming back we can understand turnover if this event happens and this turnover spikes on this shop actually we know things are working so we can manage trends and really understand what that phone looks like. So yes there's a real estate value but there's a whole layered piece underneath which we're managing and monitoring which allows us to analyze the behavior of the asset not just the physical data of the the the the hard property data bits which which is invaluable and that and that will therefore resonate with the strategy that we do our residence uh residential strategy in the future but also in other assets moving forward as well so so Denz you you went to LSE didn't you cities program I remember you telling me that in the past and um so so if you if you took everything we've talked about today and you you put that into your course there or you know you gave a lecture on it or or it was part of the the program how how do you think it would be thought about in because you're you're now doing something which is is real is sort on the ground you're you're doing it in real constraints for real people I'm curious to see kind of theory of practice from that perspective. Yeah really I've never had that question before so yeah I did I did do my masters at the NSE uh with in the cities program um I definitely wasn't as smart as everyone else there um but what I did come away with from that uh that year which was the most insightful year of my life actually um was I was really interested in how you know what what the creative class and the creative movement did to regen. And that's what that was the catalyst to all of this right so the catalyst to all of this was okay you know if you look at pockets of city across the globe it could be the ones closest to home it could be Shoreditch it could be Broccoli it could be um uh Winwood in Miami it could be um they're blank now but Kreisberg in Berlin certain pockets of city that were driven through the creative class movement Richard Florida's uh thesis and theory um this idea that you kind of land a series of creatives um into an environment that create a an intrinsic culture that drive uh great food great art great music around all of that allows and then bring people in because they want people want to be next to that people want to work next to that people want to play next to that people want to live next to that that was the real catalyst to this and when I wrote my thesis around um uh could you send me back now so you know I wrote my thesis around pop-up retail specifically and how the ephemeral city really influenced the creative class movement because you know you had really cheap warehousing um that could be taken and and and and uh activated and animated and then bringing people into this part of the city they would never have been there. You know that that writing about that and thinking about that alongside a course which was essentially sociology really thinking about the social impact of that um allowed me to merge those two worlds and and begin to really think about what does that mean to place. We didn't really know it was called placemaking then for about 10, oh it was about 10, 12 years ago, you know, and what the penny drop moment for me was actually the the the two years after that. The two years after that is when I went to a business called Appear Here and Appear Here was um in its day um a a platform that connected independent businesses and brands to vacant shops for for meanwhile uses and we were really lucky to work with the TFL uh for particularly Old Street Station and we had I can't remember now there 10 or 12 units that we had um there that we could use for the pop-up services and I remember after we redecorated and re-re- revigorated that station and we had 10 shops and two market stores I remember sitting there and they were they were all activated animated and thinking wow if you've got a critical mass of space that is curated with the right mixes and you've got footfall in front of you or you can bring footfall there you've that's placemaking that's creating something which is interesting different um but you need the critical mass you need the right size of space it's not about two three four thousand square foot it's probably about five 500 square foot 300 square foot and you have the right content in front of the right people actually you're onto something um and that was the penny drop moment it was after I guess a couple of years of thesis writing an academia then going into the commercial world I never meant to go into real estate right it just it just happened um I genuinely thought I'd leave LSE and go be back into design and be an urban design essentially um and you know that was the penny drop moment where and to this day it it's still me looking at a plan and going right we're gonna cut these all up is they're gonna be the right size for this type of demographic and we're gonna create a place through layering programmatic components to it we're gonna go and find out what people want and really going to deliver a package which helps those people make that happen. And in the long term we're all going to see the rewards. The brand's going to do well the landlord's going to be really happy because it created a place which is unique, different and better than anywhere else. And the people that around the existing communities are hopefully going to love it because they're going to feel integrated and um that that was I guess the learning of of LSC is making sure those stakeholders have all aligned.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah I've really done disservice on my on my year at LSC no no well well thank you for um thank you for jogging your own memory because I hadn't I hadn't prepared that question at all so it was very off the hoof um but I'm gonna carry on that thread for just for a second because I'm really interested in that and because it relates very much to what we've been doing at Truewood Brewery which is another kind of example of this kind of creative industries within the city. I'm curious from your time there the justification or the rationale for embedding creativity within cities like do you have a feel for for what that is more broadly to a city ecosystem to a city economy to the people and the place well good question.

SPEAKER_02:

I think I'm slightly biased because I'm creative right and I've seen what having a series of creative businesses or creative communities come together what that can do um and how creatives think about space how creatives think about community and it's not necessarily about the commerciality of it if you just think about the bare basics of you know you put a bunch of creatives in a space you give them free space or whatever they they do to do to to you give that space to them they will create things where which are incredible unique and different and then suddenly create place personality and I've always been of the opinion that I'll give you a real life example I've always been of the opinion that as an owner we are creating the platform for those people we do not do that stuff. And it's really hard for me to say that as the creative but what to that the the birth of gather which for which for example which is our events program uh brand you know was born out of my frustration in shopping centres where landlords would had a marketing budget to run events and you'd have some ginormous dinosaur run through a shopping centre and everyone thought that was great and it cost 15 20 grand and we didn't really understand the value of that and there that would happen four times a year. And I'm going really back to basics here. And the fundamentals of that creative class movement were were in this idea of gather. And I said right what we'll do instead of spending all that money in there what we'll do is we'll take a space or white fox's space we'll call it gather because it's the place where people we want people to gather and we'll hire a community curator who is completely embedded within the local community and that person will be the hub of bringing in the creative community to do stuff. And it was a huge and it's completely free. And what that has ended up doing is driving footfall driving dwell time completely creating a domino effect of different types of creative moments and that could be the the launch of Kingdom which was one of our uh the first independent high streets you know you put a bunch of creatives together it's amazing what happens you know you have great maker spaces you have great events great music you have great artwork you know and and then their community comes together and suddenly this uh ripple effect that happens that you know you've got a a real convergence of different types of people coming into a space i mean that's a real simple version of what we try to do but it takes that philosophy on right it takes that philosophy on creating free space which can be overlaid with creative ideas which then engages a community and therefore drives value to us as a landowner uh because you're bringing new people into a shopping centre or a or a residential environment that would never overcome it you know and suddenly it's on their social media suddenly they're talking about it on their podcast suddenly they're drawing it suddenly they're talking about it to their other friends and that's what I think the power of creativeness gives to to these kind of environments.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah yeah yeah I think um you're also describing kind of a humanity there aren't you as well it's kind of like that sort of human aspect of bringing people together a gathering and and the kind of creativity and that comes from from being together and being with others and I think um it's a convergence of ideas. Yeah that's that's the idea that's what cities kind of are in a sense isn't it it's kind of like these engines of connection people and ideas and um innovation you know go back to Jane Jacobs and other things you know that was all of the best the city as an engine wasn't it um and and yeah you know I think that's really like fascinating. And so so so you personally then you know you obviously got a a real passion for for people and places and that intersection you've you've studied it you're not working it do you know why you know what for you personally like why'd you get off bed why why do you do this?

SPEAKER_02:

That's a good one. One of my professors once said to me like being a designer isn't a job it's a choice of life it's it's it's you you're living and breathing yeah and it couldn't be truer. You know this this job I'm very I I I I I love what I do. I love the environment that I work in the people that I work with because it's it's in their DNA. Even if you don't know about it it's in the DNA because unfortunately my wife and child have to endure me dragging them to the latest launches or going to Columbia Road on a Sunday to check out the newest independence or what's going on in these latest cities because you know you you have to get inspiration at every moment and it could be literally sitting down and going okay that's a really interesting way of outlining this table designing this table or this wall or this countertop because actually everything like that influences everything that we're seeing today because it's the it's the it's it's what you live and breathe. So it's definitely not a job I don't leave I work uh at five six seven o'clock and go okay now that that's over I'm gonna I'm gonna live my other life um it it is completely um ingrained in me why do I do it because you know it sounds super cheesy but I think I'm a you know I think I really love creating stuff I really love and I know that I think that's been said before that you know having the ability to draw something and that goes back to being a designer having ability to draw something the thing that excites me the most is selling it into the cut business you know going to the funds funds and trying to sell this idea in or go into my line manager or or or the the the board and selling this idea in and the why of doing it. And then the other layer of actually creating it and going hey look we did it that that really buzzes me. That really engages me and and I think yeah that's something you can't really get rid of Ray.

SPEAKER_01:

Amazing and then so just to end then so at the moment you say you're you're taking your young daughter for a walk around Columbia world if in if in 2030 years she's taking you for a walk around some part of London. I don't know I don't think that'll last to be like what could what would it be like that in 20 30 years time the work that we have done collectively over our careers and the impact you've had.

SPEAKER_02:

I can tell you what I hope it won't be like won't be like yeah I hope it won't be full of screens yeah and click and collect points and uh AI robots welcome me into a shop. That's what I hope it's not because I think where retail got lost a decade ago or longer is that it lost its human connection. And I think there's no doubt the online world is gonna is is is taking a big chunk of that and I think that's totally fine. It's taking away the boring bit, the functional shopping bit you know go and get your black t-shirts in my case or go and get your shampoo or whatever else you need to do and subscribe to Amazon go and do that. But if you want experiences and you want moments that you want to share and talk about I think that has to remain so I hope it isn't just a complete digital sphere. But in 20 years time someone will look back and go what old guy old old thinking guy saying that. But I think retail should always be authentic and whatever that may be in the next 20 years it has to remain authentic and organic.

SPEAKER_01:

Dan thank you very much for your time today. It's been really really fascinating conversation to learn more about the projects you're doing your your mindset your approach and I think there's a huge amount of alignment between how we think about things and and and our business as well and um it's been really really good to dive into that so thank you for your time.

SPEAKER_02:

Pleasure thanks for inviting me again really appreciate it. Thanks Dad.

SPEAKER_00:

Cheers thank you for listening to the Grow Places podcast for more information visit growplaces.com and follow us at We Grow Places across all social channels. See you next time