In retail property, success is often defined by yields, rents and foot traffic. Those metrics will always matter. But beyond price, growth and performance, 2025 reinforced something deeper for Hawaiian: Social impact and commercial performance don’t just coexist; they strengthen each other when designed together.
Although both are recognised as important, they are often treated as separate priorities – one values-led, the other value‑driven. At Hawaiian, they are inseparable.
With more than one million people living within 10 minutes of our centres, we are uniquely placed to redefine neighbourhood retail. We see our centres as places that serve people, not just transactions – places that foster identity, connection and pride alongside great shopping and hospitality.
Strengthening our commitment to this vision, we spent 2025 exploring how our centres function and experimenting with new ideas to understand how place activation sparks genuine connection.
At the heart of this work lies a simple but powerful question: Does living closer to a Hawaiian centre lead to a happier life and a greater sense of wellbeing for the people in our communities?
What we learned compelled us to double down on what truly drives impact. When people feel connected, they stay longer, visit more often and build meaningful relationships with the spaces and people around them. This engagement strengthens commercial performance and enables us to reinvest back into the community, creating a positive cycle of connectionand contribution.
Community-led business strategy
To realise this vision, we reshaped our leadership structure in early 2025 to position community impact as a core business driver.
Throughout 2025, we embedded this ethos across the business, ensuring community considerations shape how we invest, design, engage and operate each day. This shift enables us to rethink how we activate our centres, aligning community impact with commercial performance. It’s a commitment we’ll continue to build on as we move into 2026 and beyond.
Where community meets retail
Across our 11 shopping centres, each with its own character and needs, we know that understanding what matters locally is essential. This guides how we make decisions today and how our centres evolve tomorrow. Our social investment approach reflects this mindset.
Last year showed us that putting people first is an approach that delivers. Centre upgrades shaped by community feedback, along with programs bringing our places to life through community‑led events, partnerships and wellbeing initiatives, delivered consistent results. Customers stayed longer, visited more often and engaged more deeply with our centres. Retailers benefited from increased foot traffic and a receptive, connected community.
Neighbourhood Chats
Our Neighbourhood Chats initiative – a property‑led consultation model focused on social outcomes – reflects our commitment to deeper community connection. By bringing together schools, retailers, community groups, local government and local police, these sessions create space for honest conversations and co‑designed, practical solutions.
At a 2025 session at our Forrestfield centre, residents highlighted limited public transport as a key contributor to social isolation, particularly for older community members. In response, and in partnership with local representatives, we co‑designed a trial community bus service for nearby retirement villages. Launching in 2026, the six‑month trial will provide direct transport to and from our centre.
This initiative shows how local insight can be translated into meaningful action and reinforces our belief that genuine collaboration delivers better outcomes for everyone.
Hawaiian’s Newpark
Hawaiian’s Newpark centre is a valued community hub with potential. Since 2023, we’ve delivered meaningful upgrades – improved amenities, a refreshed tenancy mix and a vibrant new alfresco space, a first for the centre.
Listening to residents, we also introduced a more affordable grocery option with the opening of WA’s first Supa Valu by Metcash in December 2023.
Building on this community‑first approach, we are advancing plans for the Newpark Community Precinct, a new basketball court and nature play space designed specifically for local needs.
These enhancements highlight our commitment not only to commercial strength, but to the wellbeing and everyday experiences of the communities we serve. This philosophy extends beyond physical upgrades, shaping how we activate our centres with experiences that inspire, connect and reflect their communities.
Airship Orchestra
A standout example was Airship Orchestra at Claremont Quarter, a WA‑first immersive art installation delivered with Melbourne‑based studio ENESS. The installation featured 16 towering inflatable characters throughout the centre, creating a vibrant public‑art experience that encouraged gathering and connection. It also highlighted our revitalised Laneway precinct and the arrival of Yo Chi frozen yoghurt.
The results were strong: foot traffic increased 10.5 per cent weekly, peaking at 24.9 per cent on launch weekend, and May sales rose 4.2 per cent, year on year.
Deepening community impact, we partnered with local public primary schools, providing early access, transport and an artist‑led educational session to spark creativity in students, rounded out with a Yo Chi visit. By pairing a high‑impact activation with meaningful community engagement, the campaign showed social connection and commercial performance growing together.
AFLW Community Training Clinic
Last year also brought Hawaiian’s first AFLW Community Training Clinic, strengthening our partnership with the West Coast Eagles AFL Women’s team and our commitment to local communities.
The clinic united 11 junior clubs and 203 girls aged 10-14 from across 10 Hawaiian neighbourhoods, giving aspiring players an on‑field session with AFLW stars, while coaches joined a development session led by Senior Coach Daisy Pearce and Head of Women’s Football Michelle Cowan.
Our team managed every touchpoint – welcoming clubs, co-ordinating transport, travelling with them and hosting a team dinner that brought our hospitality partners closer to the communities they serve. One inspiring element was how our people volunteered their time, reflecting how deeply community engagement is embedded at Hawaiian.
For us, the AFLW clinic demonstrated the role the property industry can play in fostering social connection.
2026 and beyond
Carrying these insights into 2026 and beyond, we will continue our community‑focused approach as we deliver an exciting pipeline of projects. A major solar installation across three centres, amenity and alfresco upgrades at Hawaiian’s Park Centre and Hawaiian’s Noranda, and an expanding suite of community initiatives reinforce our commitment to creating places that are both connected and commercially strong.
These initiatives reflect a consistent philosophy: create places that matter; places where people connect, wellbeing is supported, communities thrive and long‑term value grows.
Final reflections
The Australian shopping centre industry is undergoing meaningful transformation. We stand at a defining moment, with the opportunity and responsibility to reshape the role of retail in our communities.
Our learning is clear: Stronger community engagement lifts visitation and supports retailer success, fuelling a virtuous cycle of social and commercial value. When community objectives align with commercial outcomes, our industry doesn’t just remain sustainable, it becomes transformative.
From major redevelopments to everyday activations, we’ve demonstrated that social impact and commercial success strengthen one another. By continuing to listen, co‑design and act with intent, we can help build stronger, connected communities long into the future, and in doing so, hope to inspire others to strive for the same.
Moving forward, we’re energised by the opportunity to continue evolving as we work towards delivering lasting impact in our communities, with our centres firmly at the heart.
- This article by Richard Kilbane, CEO at Hawaiian, was first published in SCN magazine – Big Guns 2026 edition
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