The EG Interview: Meet the collective reframing the approach to development

Good development should be about challenging the norm, not always playing by the rules, and refusing to do what you’ve always done.  That is, at least, the view of the team at Frame RE, a self-described talent collective. In May the firm was appointed by Imperial College London to draw up proposals for a £1bn redevelopment of Carphone Warehouse’s headquarters, in North Action, into a 1,400-home mixed-use development and sustainable new HQ for the retailer. The team wants to turn development on its head and believes that for real estate to really be better, its needs to be a bit more Hollywood.  Yair Ginor, founder of the business and former partner at Lipton Rogers Development with more than 20 years of experience, says the basis for the establishment of Frame was the film industry: “When you look at the production of a film, it has so many similarities with what we do,” he says.  “The budgets of big successful films are actually very similar to those of large developments. The number of people that are involved and the time that it takes to produce a film, etcetera.” He adds: “What’s interesting in the film industry is that producers put a team together that is the best for that specific film. They may have worked with some individuals in the past and would know them, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that they would put the same people on each film because sometimes you have a comedy, sometimes you have a thriller.  “It’s kind of ridiculous that within our industry, we try to fit the same people in whichever project the company has just because these are the people you have. It makes much more sense to put the team together to suit the needs of the project.” We all know how to deliver a project and generate a profit. But we also think there’s a better way of doing things Subjit Jassy Dream team And that’s exactly what Yair has done with Frame RE for One Portal Way. The team he has brought together for the project is a group of individuals – all with outside interests – that can bring the very best to the development. To ensure the residential offering is the best that it can be, this team includes built-to-rent expert Michael Allen. Allen has more than two decades of experience in the residential market, managing a $3.2bn (£2.4bn) fund of more than 4,000 homes for Nuveen, before crossing the Atlantic from New York to London to launch Quintain’s BTR platform in the UK. Subjit Jassy brings with him almost 30 years of experience in asset management and development across the commercial real estate market, holding senior roles at Quadrant Estates, Resolution Properties and Invista REIM. And rounding up the team for this particular project is Will Polisano. Polisano and Ginor worked together at Lipton Rogers, bringing 22 Bishopsgate in the heart of the City to life. Polisano is the youngest in the group, with a decade of experience under his belt, and brings with him the added benefit of a focus on social impact. His other production is leading Drum London, a real estate platform focused on developing high-quality temporary housing for the homeless. “As individuals, we’re all really experienced, and we also have a very diverse set of experiences, expertise and outlook,” says Ginor. “It’s very helpful to have in good project, but for some reason is really lacking from our industry, where a lot seems to be a cookie-cutter approach.” For New York-based Allen this collection of diverse experiences is what will separate the Frame concept from the rest: “One of things that I notice, which contrasts dramatically to Frame, is that many of the development teams you find in the UK essentially all come from what I call central casting. “The preponderance of development managers that I’ve run into in the UK and in London are surveyors from Reading. We love surveyors from Reading, but I think what that does is it creates a bit of a cultural blind spot to the whole development process because you have teams of people who are all very like-minded, who have done a lot of the same things and are all trained in the same way,” he says. New normal For Frame, development is all about challenging the norm. And each other – another benefit, they say, comes from them being a collective of individuals with outside interest. “We have all worked in property companies, development companies, private equity companies,” says Jassy, “so we all know how to deliver a project and generate a profit. But we also think there’s a better way of doing things. We’re all quite passionate about the built environment and trying to make a difference to society.” He shares an example on One Portal Way during some discussions with architects over the residential towers at the scheme. “There were lots of drawings being done by the architects of towers, and we would sit in meetings saying, ‘We don’t want to see the towers, we’re only interested in the ground floor plate.’ If the ground floor is not good, then people won’t like living there.” He adds: “In terms of appraisal, there’s no value in grass, ground floor plane, cycle lanes, green spaces, because people normally focus on square footage, the number of apartments and values per square foot. But we spend a lot of time saying to the architects, ‘Stop that, look at the ground floor, because that’s going to be the key to this development. And the towers will go wherever they go, and they will be as tall as they go and have a certain number of units in them, but it doesn’t mean anything if the ground floor is not right.’” Plans submitted for One Portal Way last month feature a cluster of towers, several at 50 storeys, but also a 1.8-acre public park. The site in total extends to 4.5 acres. “It’s mportant to remember,” adds Polisano, “and it’s easy to forget sometimes, that we are designing not for next year or the year after. We are designing for, at the earliest, 2028 for this scheme – and at the latest well into the 2030s. Nobody has a crystal ball, so you can only challenge what you see today.  “You can look at trends and you can delve as deep as you want into what people think the cities of tomorrow will be and how Covid will change our cities, but no one knows. Nobody has a clue, because people and how people behave will ultimately shape our cities. All we can do is create something that we feel maximises happiness for the people that are going to live there.” Fluid thinking It’s clear when talking with the Frame team that it is people and behaviours that matter more than bricks and mortar. It’s clear in the creation of the business, of this fluid collective that will bring in the best people for the job and not the same people, and in their focus on creating a £1bn scheme in North Action that delivers for the individual.  “It’s not as if we’re waging war on everything conventional,” says Ginor, with a wry smile. “It’s that we are very well informed of what exists out there and we just don’t mind spending a bit more time and energy, taking things to pieces and putting them back together. Yes, it costs us more and it’s more energy consuming. And yes, it is sometimes frustrating, but we believe that if there’s a better result out there, then it’s worth the effort.” He adds: “If there’s one thing I think it would be good for people to take away, it is to try and use every project as an opportunity to do at least one thing better. To me, the one thing that is most underappreciated and undervalued across our whole industry is ideas. People think of development, even within real estate, of it as essentially a process. But this is not about process, it is about knowledge. We are part of the knowledge industry. We are part of the creative industry. What we do is deeply creative. We quite literally create new things, and you cannot create good new things without being exposed to new ideas.” “We’re not just processing stuff and doing what we did in the last project and just repeating it,” says Jassy. “We don’t come in with fixed ideas. So, if you do see yourselves as just being about knowledge, creative ideas and you don’t necessarily all agree, but you just apply that to something in the built environment, something interesting is born as a result of it. But we don’t have the answer on every project at the beginning of every project. We want to evolve and go work our way through it.” Polisano butts in: “And, it wouldn’t be very much fun if you did have the answer, would it?” He’s not wrong. After all, would anyone really want to go to the movies if they knew exactly what the story, the score and the ending would be? Main photo: Left to right: William Polisano, Subjit Jassy, Yair Ginor and Michael Allen © Portraits by Louise Haywood-Schiefer; One Portal Way: Frame RE To send feedback, e-mail samantha.mcclary@eg.co.uk or tweet @samanthamcclary or @EGPropertyNews