Westfield’s Communities

Since the first Westfield shopping centre opened in Sydney in 1959, the Group’s malls have been places where people not only shop, but socialise, work, enjoy leisure time and dine. Today more than ever Westfield centres play an integral role in their local communities, as a place where people gather for a variety of reasons.

Every Westfield community is unique — but the fundamentals of engaging with each community are consistent at every Westfield centre around the world. Centre management teams get to know their community leaders — whether they represent special interest groups; commercial chambers or local charities — and work together to raise awareness, funds, or reach some other shared objective. On some occasions mall space is made available to community organisations that will use that space to reach their community more broadly by providing information, staging special events or even advertising through the centres’ media network. Other times the centre management teams will act as a liaison between local groups and retailers in an effort to boost support for a particular group. In yet other instances Westfield staff themselves will be directly involved with the community by offering hands on support for special event days in or out of the centre.

Many Westfield centres are already home to community infrastructure. Libraries, youth and senior centres, childcare services and recreation centres have increasingly become a normal part of the mix at a Westfield shopping mall. 

Redevelopments provide further opportunity for community engagement to take place. Environmental and economic impact statements are a standard part of the planning process, as is the necessary community engagement program whereby Westfield can keep a local community fully informed about any changes taking place in their area. A significant redevelopment like that of Westfield Stratford City warranted even deeper community engagement throughout its local community due to the scale of the project, and initial consultations were underway some years ahead of the centre’s completion. 

While Westfield centres maintain an individual relationship with their local communities there is also the capacity for Westfield to collectively work with particular community groups — as in the case of the Australian portfolio and its relationship with groups for the families and carers of children with disabilities, or in the United States and its support for schools through the Give Back to School program that operated across 23 different local markets. 

Over and above its planned community programs Westfield centres have at times, needed to be flexible enough to respond to communities in crisis or need. In 2011 this was again demonstrated in New Zealand when the city of Christchurch suffered a major earthquake, and Westfield Riccarton functioned as a rallying point for the local community as the centre was progressively brought back to trade. 

Westfield also supports many organisations at a regional or national level, including in Australia the Sydney Children’s Hospital and the Victor Chang Cardiac Research Institute; the Cure Kids, Kids Can, StarShip and the Diabetes Foundation in New Zealand; the National MS Society, St Jude’s Children’s Hospital and the Special Olympics in the United States; and in the United Kingdom the British Heart Foundation and Breast Cancer Care. 

100% of Westfield’s operational and development centres undertake community engagement.