Fabrizio Perilli has just left TOGA as chief executive of this sizable company with its swag of property developments mostly in Sydney including the high profile Central precinct but also in Darwin and Adelaide.
His aim for his new company Perifa is to be comparable to his old gig (which he started more than 15 years ago). He’s got the backers and the professionals to help, though so far he’s not sharing the details.
At our event Tomorrowland, where he will join a panel to focus a laser light on one of the most explosive issues in the political and social agenda, Perilli will probably surprise some of the audience not so familiar with his background and passions.
They may well expect a clichéd developer tarred with the brush of the old white shoe brigade. The kind of bombastic bloke who nestles up to the big lobby groups to ram through their agenda to the state governments and endlessly complain about planning delays and that housing supply is the answer to all our affordable housing needs.
Perilli doesn’t quite fit the bill
We mention the highly contentious Design Place SEPP (State Environmental Planning Policy) that from where we stood looked like it brought down a minister, Rob Stokes, the only one in our memory who actually knew about planning from a professional point of view (he’s got a PhD in planning and environment law).
It turned out the development lobby was furious about the SEPP’s extremely modest attempts (in our view) to mandate some canopy cover for housing mostly affecting people in Western Sydney where the temperatures have already reached 50 degrees (in the shade, we’ve discovered, because that’s where the sensors were placed).
Perilli says he was involved with Stokes and the SEPP “from when he first started socialising his thoughts about the new SEPP. So I’m aware of the desire of what it was supposed to be, and why the intent wasn’t ultimately realised through the process.”
At Tomorrowland he promises he’s got a lot to share; this issue is a passion for him.
“We’re all struggling at the moment. Because I think the world has come to a position of ‘what’s in it for me? and development is okay provided it occurs somewhere else’. And development is seen as an evil, unfortunately, and mainly because of the minority of development practitioners, or a group that have not done the right thing.
“But let’s be honest, there are examples of this in every sector and in every industry. And I think that the quality of some work that has occurred over the last 20 years is quite frankly, deplorable. But it’s been allowed to occur. However, there are also examples of very good work which should be called out as this will help with the rebuild of confidence and trust from both a consumer and development industry perspective”
Perilli backs his sentiments by acting as one of the trusted advisers helping NSW Building Commissioner David Chandler straighten out some of that mess that’s given us dreadful apartment quality.
“I’m a supporter of what he’s doing,” he says.
One of the reasons things have come to such a sorry state – and probably not just in Sydney – is that “it’s been way too easy to be a developer; everyone can be a developer. And the industry has not trained and developed people appropriately over the last 20 years.”
That’s not to say there aren’t people who are “exceptional at anything they touch and that’s fantastic,” he says.
But there’s plenty who “think they’re making money, but actually haven’t delivered the right product or understand what it is to leave a legacy behind in a community”.
He likes Chandler’s idea to acknowledge tried and tested companies but also the individuals because “a company is only as good as the people it employs and there has been a lot of people movement in the last decade.
“The industry needs to have depth and reward both small and large businesses that are prepared to do the right thing, employ the right people, as well as demonstrate their commitment to training and development programs. This will ensure there is an appropriate depth of capable resources in the market to deliver the work ahead of us in all sectors.”
A good way to go forward he says is greater collaboration, and that’s what councils’ and governments’ roles can be.
“What they should be doing is actually articulating what they want to see out of development in their community. And I think they do that poorly. In fact, in some cases, I think it’s non-existent.”
The exception is the City of Sydney
“When you go in there with certain suitably experienced people, you actually have rational conversations… there are experienced people at the table, who actually express a view for what they wish to see. You can agree or disagree, but at least you get an understanding of what the vision is for the city.
You don’t get that in many other jurisdictions – you get death by process and continuous delays. And checklist, rather than the outcomes. “Everyone forgets or is prepared to compromise on the desired outcome provided the lengthy process is followed.”
Without the outcomes-based approach, you have no chance of articulating a vision of where you want to end up in 2037 or 2047. Whether public transport or even community – why not?
In the same way that we have design excellence and are now moving into built excellence, we should be now working on community excellence, he says.
By this he means developers leaving the community in a better state after the development is completed.
Every time he mentions this, however, people nod, say what a great idea it is, but the conversation “just stops” because “it’s a bit too hard, a bit too nebulous”.
What we need to avoid, he says, is a version of the Truman Show, where everything is ever so nice and perfect and the same. Responding to place is critical, he says. When you get to great places around the world, the passion they ignite is because they are diverse.
The key is to create a system that allows creativity, innovation and the best minds to put forward better ways of living, working and socialising. But within a framework of regulation and accountability.
But where to start?
Perilli harks back to a now almost old school method of charrettes where a group of representative citizens makes decisions about the future.
So what happened to these?
Maybe they were overturned by the latest shiniest thing, Perilli but closer to the truth might be that there is a huge dearth of skilled people to devote to these visionary pursuits.
A guiding light for Perilli is a project he led while he was at TOGA. A space for Oz Harvest that operated the first free supermarket where people could “take what you need, and pay what you can,” which he believes is a world first, alongside My Foundation which housed people in need and ensured they only left when permanent accommodation could be found, Thread Together, which provided clothing free of charge, Orange Sky Laundry, which provided free mobile laundry and shower facilties, and there were also regular free haircuts provided by Sustainable Salons.
It ended up creating quite a buzzy community he says, noting the sadness in this.
The concept needs to persist though, and that’s something local governments can help with. However, there needs to be some form of recognition and promotion for this public and community service to ensure it readily occurs across multiple jurisdictions.
“Imagine post-completion… servicing community needs. It might be restaurants, it might be community rooms, it might be dealing with the issues faced in those communities and neighbourhoods…it might be playgrounds, it might be schools.”
“Imagine our community in the next 20 years and saying, ‘this is what it is’, and being held accountable to it as well.
“And this is where it all falls down, because it’s all very easy to criticise. It’s very hard to be active and proactive.”
Developers have been demonised
A big barrier, he says, is that “developers, because of the way that we’ve been demonised… there is a barrier to an ideas-based engagement with the public sector where views can be shared and discussed. Everyone’s too scared to actually have a chat with us.
“So, therefore, when you talk about public-private dialogue… It makes it really difficult.
“And then if you have too many people in a room, it becomes very noisy – we’re not actually getting the outcome we all desire.”
Perhaps bringing in qualifications to being able to deliver development as the developer will help.
Our signature event Tomorrowland, held on 1 December, will focus on these issues, among others.
..By this he means developers leaving the community in a better state after the development is completed……This is not possible when developers have the power to override community objections and council regulations. Governments have relied on growth to bolster GDP and revenue and as a consequence nothing is spared.