Mirvac Retail’s “The Third Space” successful work hub at Broadway Sydney closed last week and Mirvac will move the concept to Queensland centre Orion Springfield Central for a 12 month pilot.
The successful trial of the initial concept, the latest to come out of Mirvac’s award-winning innovation program Hatch, offered start-ups, independent business people, students, artists and mobile consultants a high-tech, modular co-working space with concierge. Conveniently located at the centre, the space afforded users the connection to all the benefits and accessibility of a well serviced shopping centre and car park, catering to the trend of the mobile worker.
The Third Space concept was born out of 50 hours of customer research undertaken by Hatch and found the modern mobile worker wants the trappings of a modern office in an environment where they have retail at their fingertips. The convenient location of the hub at Broadway was chosen for the pilot to enable its users to be within three minutes of ‘everything’, including grocery shopping, retail, restaurants, work place and entertainment.
Apart from the location benefits users also enjoyed the services offered by the model including free printing/scanning/photocopying, flexible working areas including cubicles and open spaces as well as the flexibility of no time limits. From the nearly 3,000 bookings during the pilot, some 67% were repeat users, and 95% said they would recommend the space. The main clients of The Third Space were Start Ups (32%) and Small Businesses (30%).
The Third Space model provides soundproof phone booths, open-plan workspace, focused work pods, casual meeting spaces and a meeting room along with other traditional office services and its own dedicated concierge who can help co-ordinate picking up dry-cleaning or groceries.
The offer at Orion Springfield Central will provide the opportunity to trial the concept with a different demographic in metropolitan Brisbane. It will be located in the Target Mall opposite Mini Minders providing excellent access to Australia Post, banking and library facilities, restaurants and cafes, supermarkets and free parking. It will be the first co-working space located in Ipswich offering the local community some work life balance opportunity where a large percentage of workers often travel long distances to the Brisbane CBD.
Mirvac’s innovation driver Hatch has a dedicated team that speaks to Mirvac’s purpose to create value for their customers with bold and innovative retail experiences. Hatch is embedded across the company and tasked with providing experience and services that meet the customer needs, investigating customer pain points and looking to solve them creatively.
The Third Space is another example of Mirvac’s customer-centric approach that has seen a number of initiatives rolled out across their retail centres including Shopping Nanny. Thefirst of its kind in Australia, Shopping Nanny, offers a personal, complimentary nanny for Mirvac’s customersand is another successful example of Hatch’s creative thought process.
Mirvac’s Group General Manager of Innovation, Christine Gilroy, said The Third Space pilot at Broadway Sydney delivered a satisfaction rating of 93.6 per cent with a very high proportion of repeat visitation and recommendation.
“Innovation is part of everyone’s role at Mirvac but Hatch is our dedicated program that ensures we are delivering more than just bricks and mortar – we use a best practice program that allows us to identify and solve problems for our customers, in new creative ways.”
