Anyone who knows Greg Goodman, enigmatic co-founder of the giant Goodman Group, knows he’s keen to be a part of the global transformation under way to a low carbon and sustainable world.
Goodman is on the record saying, “We’re working with big customers around the world to make our buildings better and more regenerative. We’re trying to do more with less.”
It’s an ambition articulated in its 2021 Sustainability Report.
And with 170 buildings in Australia and nearly $70 billion under management globally Goodman knows his company can influence the market.
But there are also plenty of systemic shifts at play that have influenced Goodman to be part of the green revolution.
Today’s large institutional investors and financiers have been swept up in the global tide of the environmental social and corporate governance (ESG) revolution. The portfolios they invest in need to demonstrate how they will reach net zero. In recent times, they’ve added another requirement to the mix: the need for property investments to disclose not just how they minimise damage to nature, but how they will restore and regenerate to a biodiverse and abundant natural environment.
In Australia, it’s early days but the company’s ambitions are strongly focused around greening the sites of its typically vast industrial buildings. It is landscaping the more visible public realms, with the addition of trees, abundant plants, garden beds – all focused around biodiversity.
At the company’s Interchange Park at Eastern Creek estate in Sydney for example, it is staying a step ahead of the imperatives. It’s trialling an expansive array of more than 20 garden beds, mostly for the use of customers at the estate. It’s introduced beehives with native, stingless bees – resulting in increased garden productivity. So much so that the abundant harvest of herbs, fruit and vegetables grown at the site are donated to OzHarvest of which Goodman has been a long-time supporter.
The company is also committed to help support the health and wellbeing of Country by valuing, respecting and being guided by the Indigenous community, with Indigenous designers consulted from the start of the project.
One of Goodman’s latest development sites in South Sydney is incidentally one of the country’s very few – and only modern – multi-storey logistics building, a response to the need to maximise the value of expensive inner city land and reduce carbon-producing transport for last mile distribution.
Leading the design thinking for Goodman in Australia is Kori Todd who joined the company in March last year, after more than 10 years with architects Woods Bagot. Kori’s strategy is to integrate sustainability into the essence of the company’s brand, in an echo of the way Apple and Google – brands she’s worked with in the past – are instantly recognisable as design leaders.
Kori says the City of Sydney’s 15 per cent canopy cover for the South Sydney site is a good start to greening, but the company wants to go further.
“Rather than think of canopy cover as a hindrance, we’ve been looking at the opportunities,” she says.
“Such as providing shading for our buildings, which is helping the heat island effect of our sites. It’s creating a great place for people who work in these buildings, and that helps from a wellness perspective to break out to outside of their work.
“So green roofs, green walls and a lot of permeable paving is something that we’re implementing, which is an exciting opportunity to start to break up the austerity that naturally comes along with industrial development.”
Emma McMahon, head of sustainability (Australia) says tree planting is a major part of the broader sustainability strategy. The company employs a consultant arborist “who actually maintains and manages those trees; each of those trees are tagged so that we can understand their life expectancy, but also their carbon sequestration”.
Interestingly, the company also has a head of presentation who is in charge of how the company presents “from a landscaping point of view, and green space point of view”, Emma says.
Kori says landscaping is important for the community.
“Our landscaping has always been an integral part of the presentation of our sites. We are now looking for it to be more prominent in the community and designing with Country,” she says.
“I think that’s where the landscaping component of our developments is starting to play such a prominent role. It’s our opportunity to give back to the community – in that residual land that sits around the site and making sure that we’re really putting a lot of thought and effort into those pieces of land to make sure that they’re the best that they can be.”
In Paris the company has set a powerful benchmark in its Green Dock logistics project on the River Seine, a 90,000 square metre multimodal logistics site that aims to showcase best practice in decarbonised logistics. But even more impressive will be the planned green rooftop, an enormous 17,000 space, designed by Cultivate, that is expected to be the largest urban farm in Europe, producing hundreds of tonnes of herbs, vegetables, flowers, and fruit varieties.
The company says sustainability is key to its core activities and one of its four core values: innovation, integrity, determination and sustainability.
It targets renewable energy, with goals for 100 megawatts of solar installed across all of its properties by 2025; it wants carbon neutral operations, with 100 per cent renewable energy and it wants resilient properties as well.
But what gives Goodman the confidence to hold such aspirational targets?
Enabling these goals is the Goodman business model – holding property long term, which is unique in itself. This means it develops, owns and manages the properties long term: it’s got skin in the game.
It’s a model that enables a much longer term vision and engagement than might otherwise be the case. This means Goodman can plan for the long term – sustainably.
