He spends half his time in the West End with traditional clients and the other half in East London’s creative Mecca at Second Home. But C&W’s Tom Redmayne will tell you the differences between occupier types are disappearing fast
Creative tenants are no longer being dismissed as London’s secondary occupier base. Last year they accounted for 35% of all commercial take-up in the UK capital.
And while accommodating these firms does not mean property companies and investors have to turn their backs on their more traditional clients, future success is likely to stem from understanding how to work with the new as well as the old – not least as the lines between the two continue to blur.
So what is the best way to achieve a happy medium? Hire someone who does not mind spending their working week hotfooting it from one side of London to the other.
Cushman & Wakefield surveyor Tom Redmayne, 28, reveals why splitting his time – and outfit choices – between Portman Square, W1, and a start-up workspace in east London’s creative heartland helps him to understand the increasingly diverse needs and requirements of the capital’s occupier mix.
You have two roles at Cushman & Wakefield. How does your dual job actually work?
I spend half my time in the West End office agency team at C&W over in our Portland Square office and the other half working for our global technology team in Second Home, Rohan Silva’s co-working hub in east London. My day-to-day job is leasing buildings, predominantly in the West End. Then, on the global technology side, I look at what disruptive technologies are coming into our industry. I also look at global tech trends, and how they can be brought down to a more localised level on developments in and around London. So I always have both a suit and jeans and a T-shirt somewhere near me so I can dress for the office I am going to be in on a particular day. Or I change halfway through the day if I need to start in one and finish in the other.
And are the roles themselves as diverse as the accompanying sartorial choices for each?
Not as much as people might think. Global tech trends in particular feed into property investment and development strategy. Planning applications for huge projects around London are being submitted now. But they are schemes scheduled for completion in five, 10, 15 years from now. With things changing so quickly, how do we futureproof them? These tech trends are a great place to start. Even if we can’t tell exactly what the technology is that we need to put in a particular building right now, we can look at patterns to help us understand how we build the infrastructure around it. That will allow us to update them more easily when the time comes and make these new buildings not only relevant, but aspirational for the new generation.
And tech, culture and creative tenants are a great indicator of the direction these future trends might be moving in, which is obviously really helpful when it comes to making long-term investment decisions. The funny thing is that a lot of these tenants would, once upon a time, have been the traditional West End occupiers. But my generation and the one following mine no longer come out of university necessarily aspiring to work for Goldman Sachs. They come out wanting to start their own businesses or work for Google.
Does this mean the gap between what traditional and creative tenants want is also shrinking?
In many ways, yes. Because it is more about an overarching culture shift. Future tenants are likely to have a much less structured working lifestyle, thanks to the technology and mobile devices we now have available. They might be willing to work longer hours, but they’re going to have much higher expectations as to the quality of life that they’ll live around those longer hours. So we will need buildings that are smarter, cooler and more inspirational.
But you still have your two roles, which means liaising with two different sets of clients. Do you think this will change over the next few years to the point where we will see an almost entirely creative occupier base emerge?
Fundamentally, every business is a tech business now. That has happened already. And in a way that adds a layer of creativity to everyone’s working lives by default. And history tells us that when things change, people adapt. If you told me seven years ago that my dad would be using a touch screen computer to read his newspaper, I’d have told you that you were absolutely bonkers. I think it’s an amazing thing, technology. And, if used in the right way, it can really improve people’s lives. And it can be applied to developments and schemes to make them more flexible and more relevant – futureproofed. That is what every developer and investor wants, isn’t it?
Is this link between tech and culture and the potential for higher returns fully appreciated by the real estate sector yet?
It varies. I think you’d be surprised by how many senior people in these businesses do understand. Because they’re very bright people. They know that change is coming, and they want to be at the cutting edge of it. They might not necessarily know how to do it, but often the brightest people are where they are because of their ability to say: “OK, that might not be my area of expertise, but I understand it’s important and I’m willing to listen to other people.” The big shape shift will be the fact that the person telling them about these things might be a lot younger. But that shouldn’t mean they have any less of a voice.
What cultural and creative occupiers want
Dion Panambalana, Real Estate Partner, Hogan Lovells
London is the most-visited city in the world; almost 17m people visited in the first six months of 2015. So it is not surprising that London is full of cultural and creative industries. Creatives have brought new life and vitality to run-down areas of the city. Cultural organisations have driven student-based regeneration in major parts of “New London”.
Creatives and culturals have brought a new demand focus to savvy investors, keen to capture new relationships with them and to keep them in their buildings because they want to be there, not because they can’t leave.
This does not necessarily mean lease terms must be shorter (although they could be for small creative start-ups). And some culturals can more readily commit to a long-term arrangement because of their funding flows.
Both creatives and culturals want 21st-century 24/7 access. That does not just mean 24-hour security and climate control. It means complementary night time and weekend uses as well as more of a two-way relationship with the landlord. So, they might focus on:
• being meaningfully involved in who their neighbours are, whether as lessees in the rest of the building or just in encouraging pop-up space outside;
• creating or controlling access to the public realm around the building;
• how to introduce new services;
• technological permeability of the building – for example, wireless transmission boosters;
• the flexibility to incubate start-ups in an “ideas soup” environment;
• branding common parts of the building and, if possible, the adjoining public realm; and
• making the space their own – for example, creating an “office plus” environment through more extensive alterations and using flexibility as
well as “home space” for those companies who minimise home working.
None of this new, just different.
