Hi, Will - how are you? 

 

Good, thanks, Dave. How are you? 

 

Not bad. Now listen, I wanted to talk to you about your new venture: I'll call it that - your new company, Murray Twohig, which you've formed with David Twohig of Battersea fame, and also wanted to chat about your project win already. That is, the Dream Unlimited and Great Gulf scheme down on Toronto's waterfront. So firstly, could you pinpoint precisely what your firm does, if you could, in words? And secondly, could you outline that Canadian project, and its key importance is sort of previously sidewalks, isn't it? 

 

There's a lot there, and I don't know where to start! But I will start by saying that it's not a new company or a new venture. It's the renaming of an existing company. So, as you know well, I've worked for Wordsearch for 25 years. Wordsearch Place, grew out of Wordsearch, recognizing there was a need to really think about places in a more cohesive, deeper way. And that's why Dave left Battersea Power Station to take some of that long-term thinking about vision and apply it at the earliest possible stages to improve the likelihood of success in places and development. And what happened in the beginning of this year is we realized that we'd moved so far away from Wordsearch and Wordsearch Place and we bought out a couple of our partners and we realized there was an opportunity - that this was the time to present a different face to the world. And I think that's because we're at this critical moment in time, where so much has changed over the last 20 years, and we've had this acceleration and almost this concentration of recognition of that over the last couple of years, that the whole real estate system has to change. I do a presentation at the moment that talks about the fact that change is not the choice, right? Five years ago, we talked about change being "hey everybody, change is coming, get ready for it". I think that change is here. And there's now so much rapid change, there's so much complexity, there's so much uncertainty, that we really have to look and think about how we deliver real estate fundamentally differently. And that's what Murray Twohig is doing. It's trying to recognize that not only do we have to think about vision, but vision is really about purpose and about what we're trying to achieve. And that ties into the idea of value. We're focusing on supporting developers and we're interested in development. Value means money, we're trying to make projects and make more money. But we firmly believe that values equal value, that values create value, and that if you think about purpose, it's really the G in the ESG, that we're talking about. That idea about what is important to us, what are we trying to achieve? And how are we going to do it? And how do we bring benefit to the broadest number of people. And then that becomes the S. And that then becomes the E of ESG, as well; it is trying to recognize that we have to be thinking in this century about bringing benefits to the broadest number of people. The last century was about bringing value to shareholders. And now, as everybody knows, it's about bringing value to the stakeholders. So that's what Murray Twohig does. And it does that by embedding vision and place strategy into development at the earliest possible stage. But really, at any point in the process, so that you start looking at the complexity of development from a human perspective. We all now know that real estate is as much about experience, as it is about buildings, or equally about building experiences as it is about buildings. We all know that people are important. But what we try to do is bring a rigor and a process to that thinking, so that we are breaking down the complexity of projects - real estate has now become a phenomenally complex process, not just a complicated process. We try to break that down into simple ways, so that people can maximize their opportunities, their chances of success, and then at the same time, minimize the likelihood of risk. 

And is that essentially what you mean, before we talk about Canada and Toronto, is that essentially what you mean, when you describe on your website, that you as a practice or a company, focus on 'visionary real estate for a new era'? Is that the new era you mean there?

 

William Murray
Yes! I mean, I think we're all recognizing that there are so many different aspects of real estate that have to change, whether it's the future of retail or war on talent, or how are we going to live - shared living, micro living and the future of construction - or curation of places, there's all these different things we have to think about. And that then ties into the economics of place as well. And we have to think about long-term, patient capital; we have to think about changing the pro forma and measuring success in different ways. And I think that there are lots of projects that we can look at now that either where we're learning where these opportunities lie, and some of them are where there are joint ventures with public sector organisations, it may be with ancient institutions that have different horizons, maybe housing authorities. Or it may be - there's a number of projects we've worked on in Canada, not just the one we're talking about - where these organizations are measured by more values than merely share price. They recognize they have greater responsibility. And I think a lot of this new era comes down to the idea of responsibility, and responsibility in a whole number of different areas. And we believe that if you take that responsibility seriously, and you think about how you provide benefit to the widest number of people in a place, you will make a better place. It will be because more people want to go there, it'll be more authentic, it'll be more enjoyable, it'll answer people's needs more effectively. And if you do that, you will make more money out of it. I mean, it'll become more profitable, generally more successful over the long term. I think that's, that's what we mean by a new era. 

 

And, tracing that back, is it the quest for low carbon and COVID? Are those the two things that have caused this sea change, I suppose, in development in terms of reappraising what development is all about, would you say?

 

I think they're clearly two fundamental parts of that. I wouldn't say they're the only ones. I mean, I think that shift from product to experience has been happening over the last 20 years, as we've become more focused on the individual, less on the corporate, you know, this is all part of a whole series of changes. But I believe that COVID has reminded us of our human frailty, and therefore made us focus on climate change. Because humans are, from an evolutionary perspective, designed to worry about the tiger in the bushes, not the volcano rumbling away the distance. And the fact that we've had the tiger in the bushes - ie the immediate threat of COVID - has made us recognize that that volcano rumbling in the distance is potentially harmful to us. And it's, I think accelerated our response, and made us recognize the importance of dealing with it. So, I think that that's brought those things together. And fortunately, what that then does is it then started to shift the economics of real estate. And so it might take a company like GPE who brilliantly are already incorporating their own carbon tax calculations in their pro forma in order that they can make sense of moving towards net zero. But also, as we worked on a project in Ireland a big shopping centre, recently, where the client at Goldman Sachs said that they didn't believe they thought in the next five years, you wouldn't be able to get funding for a project if you didn't hit the highest ESG standards. So, I think it's starting to push so many projects over the edge. And I think particularly on the scale of projects that we deal with: 5, 10, 15, 20 years, if you're not thinking about what the world is going to look like in 20 years, from a carbon perspective, and if you don't think about that now, you're going to find yourself in a bit of a mess. 

 

So can I talk a little bit about some of your other projects. I think you're working at Earls Court, and I think you've got an interesting project not far from where I live in Brighton down the road at Lewes. Could you talk to me just very briefly about those two projects and where we are?

 

Yes. So you're right, we did some work with the team at Earls Court right in the beginning of lockdown. So that was 2020, was that when lockdown was? I can't remember. I can't even remember what year we're in! (laughs). But right in the beginning of lockdown. And again, there's another fascinating team, I think, you know, Delancey have put together an extraordinary project team there. And with Hawkins Brown, and Egret west as an incredibly collaborative team. In fact, we're working with Hawkins Brown, on the final stages of the Begbroke Science Park competition in Oxford. And we talked to them about not so much about the buildings that have happened there, but what engagement looks like, and how you talk to people about objective. And I think this is one of the really important things, which is all too often in real estate, we present plans as outcomes. We say, "Look, this is what we want to do", rather than saying, "This is what we want to achieve". And so, one of the things we talked to the team at Earls Court about was about trying to agree objectives. And we thought, and we do this collectively, collaboratively with the team that one of the important things that needed to happen at Earls Court was that the wound - the scar - was repaired, of the lost exhibition centre. And that also, there was a recognition that jobs had gone in the local area, when the exhibition centre had come down. So, there was this first idea that we had to repair the wound; then we had to bring back jobs and opportunity and recognize that that's what this development would do, would be to help breathe money back into the economy. And then there was an important component to that, which is about rebuilding trust, because obviously trust had been lost in that first failed attempt at development. And Delancey had done an amazing job and the Earls Court development team had done an amazing job of rebuilding trust; that was a critical part of that process. And then ultimately, it was about bringing back pride in a place, because obviously so much of what made Earls Court special was this amazing thing at the centre, that people work there, that people went there, there was this, global icon, and then that had gone. And so, it was important to then say, you know, we're bringing pride back again. And so, I think that it's really important that projects are set objectives, rather than just present schemes, and to say, "okay, look, this is what we want to achieve. We want to repair this wound on this site, we want to rebuild trust. We want to bring back jobs and opportunity. And we want to bring back pride, we want to bring pride back in this place. Is that an objective that you agree with? And in which case, let's work out how we achieve it together." And that's what we tried to do on lots of projects, which is to kind of break it down and to bring back that fundamental idea about what you're trying to do. Plumpton is a fascinating project, because it's building new homes in an area that people don't necessarily want homes - in countryside.

 

Is that near the Agricultural College?

 

It is. It's east of the Agricultural College. And it's on farmland owned by Eton College that has been denuded by 20th century, aggressive agricultural practice. And here is an opportunity to bring a market town a kind of a modern market town, it isn't just kind of created in one hit, but is grown over time. And the bit that I find really interesting is about this idea of growth, and how we learn to create food locally, whether we do it by ourselves. I mean, I have grown vegetables in my garden really poorly. I don't know what I'm doing. And I'm a bit haphazard in doing it. But how do we look at farming in a local way that is productive and viable that helps us create places? How do we look at transport, and how do we understand mobility in the countryside? How do we actually create places that genuinely deliver one job for every house, because there aren't many places in the country that have managed that successfully. And trying to recognize that people have legitimate concerns about development coming in. And there have been too many developments historically, that aren't particularly good. And I think it's quite reasonable when people immediately assume that a development coming to them isn't necessarily going to be a good thing. So, I think the development industry has got a very big job to do in terms of rebuilding trust. And that is by taking its responsibility to people, to place, and to the planet very seriously, and demonstrating, little by little, that, the approach has changed, that the industry has changed, and therefore, the places that we make have changed.

 

That's a very good place to end on, and not least because this five minutes with is sort of an extended one, to 10 to 15 (laughs). 

 

Yes! (laughs)

 

...But it's really great to hear what you're doing, Will, and best of luck with Canada, with Toronto and all of these schemes. Yeah. Good for you.

 

Thanks, Dave. Thanks for the chat. And I'm really sorry that we won't be able to see each other at MIPIM

 

Yeah, well, you never know. I might be able to get down there and see the tiger in the bushes and the volcano in the jungle or whatever it was. 

 

(laughs)

 

Alright, see you soon. 

 

Cheers mate. 

 

Bye