The shopping centre industry is driven by people. It’s the skills and expertise of the people that manage, develop and evolve shopping centres for their communities that creates this great industry. In this special ‘Movers & Shakers’ feature published in SCN magazine, we speak with nine industry leaders about their career journey and experiences, and discuss some of the key trends and major challenges facing our industry. Here, we profile Martin Dowl, General Manager of Asset Creation and Investment Management at QIC.
Tell us about your current role and main responsibilities
As QIC’s General Manager of Asset Creation and Investment Management, my role leads the team that carries the overall strategy for QIC’s managed assets and investments. In leading the strategy, we then work with the broader teams around its implementation, based on a subject matter expert model. It’s a broad and exciting role that involves responsibility for the investment management of our investors’ activity centres. This includes asset management, development management, masterplanning and strategic asset planning. I’m also a director of QIC’s investment management company and a member of the executive, which manages the whole of the QIC Real Estate business.
People and partnerships are at the heart of everything you do. What has been the key to your success in this sense?
QIC is a contemporary organisation, and our model of leveraging our subject matter experts really guides our strategic long-term thinking, helping us to identify current and future needs and opportunities. QIC has a culture of fostering open and collaborative relationships with the specialist consultants who also contribute to our masterplanning and strategic asset planning. It’s an aligned, collaborative approach that then also extends to our retail partners and other stakeholders. By respecting the relevant research-led insights that our people bring to our strategies, we ensure successful outcomes for the community and our stakeholders – which, in turn, builds momentum for future projects or future partnerships and ultimately investment performance.
How has your career progressed over the years?
I’ve been with QIC for about 17 years, starting as an investment analyst in the team that I now manage. This means I have been ‘on the tools’ directly working on the assets, delivering and leading some of the larger development projects – which certainly offers me a broader perspective. Over the past eight years, I’ve moved into management, which is more about understanding and driving the business purpose and focusing on building a strong collaborative team. We now have a diverse team of some 40 high-performing contemporary-thinking professionals with whom I’m very proud to work.
Castle Towers, Sydney
What are some of the biggest learnings of your career so far?
After so many years, I’ve certainly developed a deeper understanding of the economic cycle. While some areas of the business focus on the more immediate day-to-day concerns, our team can take a broader view to see how much progress and evolution has occurred, where the trends are and what we might expect to see in the future.
Having lived and worked through multiple economic cycles and seen how much things have developed and changed over time validates our belief that we always need to be looking to where we want to be ten years from now.
We know that if we establish a longer-term vision, we can successfully manage and respond to the shorter-term issues such as the economic cycle, what the capital markets are doing, what the growth rates are doing, or to less predictable circumstances that might surface, such as a pandemic or global financial crisis.
How has the changing retail landscape impacted how you think about asset creation?
Retail will always evolve; it needs to stay relevant and to respond to and play its part in the growing and broader needs of the community.
For an activity centre to be successful in today’s world, it needs to contemplate more than retail, include the kinds of services the community is seeking, and provide entertainment and civic spaces, employment opportunities and housing. We need to focus on the opportunities that exist now and into the future as guided by our long-term vision for the particular asset.
Eastland, VIC
For QIC it’s now about creating vibrant town centres with a broad appeal that draw community members for employment, entertainment, services, residential and civic amenities, as well as for retail and social connection – day and night. It’s very evident how essential these elements are to the success of an activity centre and the multiplier effect they bring; the more activity you create, the more successful the offer is, which results in better outcomes for our retailers, our investors and the community.
What are some of the key trends you are seeing in the industry?
One trend that I believe will have an outsized impact is the concept of taking a hyperlocal approach to strategic asset planning, which means not just looking at your own assets or landholdings but zooming out to contemplate your place within the wider context of a town centre and a city.
By considering an asset’s relationship to its surroundings, aiming to support the broader community’s success, and enabling the vision of local policy-makers, the activity and growth of those investments will accelerate.
What I’m most looking forward to is emerging from this current economic cycle in a position of being well prepared and ready to execute the balance of the mixed-use masterplans that our organisation has made in concert with our preferred partners and seeing the results of that execution in the investment performance of our investors’ assets.
This Q&A profile of Martin Dowl forms part of SCN’s Movers & Shakers feature. Premium members can view the full series in the latest edition of SCN magazine.
