BCBusiness

October 2019 – Making Waves

With a mission to inform, empower, celebrate and advocate for British Columbia's current and aspiring business leaders, BCBusiness go behind the headlines and bring readers face to face with the key issues and people driving business in B.C.

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The Doctor Will Stream You Now 18 BCBUSINESS OCTOBER 2019 The 1955 price paid by the province works out to $57,250,000 in current dollars. Good luck getting that kind of deal today. In calculating a new value, Rurak looked chiefly at replacement cost—how much would have to be spent to construct a new crossing? He examined various options, in- cluding a twinning of the exist- ing bridge and a new four-lane bridge, before settling on what he judged to be the only politi- cally viable option: a four-lane tunnel (with the bridge likely retained for non-vehicular traffic). Based on that con- sideration, Rurak stickered the Lions Gate Bridge at $2.4 billion. But let's not forget those beloved Charles Marega– sculpted stone lions, which could conceivably be chiselled off and sold separately. This was Prisant's territory, and for comparables he turned first to the stone lions at the Van- couver Art Gallery, which he valued at $180,000 for the pair. But they're much larger and carved in granite, while Mare- ga's are mere concrete—hence a smaller total value of $80,000 for the bridge guardians. Prisant then launched his assessment of Stanley Park. First, the bric-a-brac. The Stan- ley Park Train was relatively simple: a website showed a lon- ger one for sale for US$95,000. Allowing for the shorter length, Prisant knocked the price down somewhat, to $100,000 Canadian. The Brockton Point totem poles were compared to other, mostly smaller, poles sold internationally, including one 36-foot-high specimen that sold for $43,000, ultimately leading to a total totem value of $360,000. The park's three Susan Point Gateway sculp- tures were assessed at $150,000. The Girl in a Wetsuit statue came in at a modest $5,000. "Sadly, there doesn't seem to be much of a main- stream market for the works of Elek Imredy," Prisant said. Assessing the Hollow Tree was trickier. Prisant considered various approaches before landing on the US$40 million "renovation" of Yosemite's Mariposa Grove. The grove's 500 sequoias must have been valued at a mini- mum of US$110,000 each to justify the project, so Prisant (while acknowledging it as a rough estimate) assigned a similar ballpark value to the Hollow Tree. Adding the items together, Prisant arrived at a total of $805,000, which he rounded down to an even 800 Gs. (Consider Girl in a Wetsuit a bonus gift.) Now, the land value. An analysis of various West End properties led Prisant to an average land value of $2,581 per square foot. At 43,396,214 square feet, Stanley Park land comes in at an initial gross value of $112,010,497,338. But there are discounts. Twenty percent of the land is undevel- opable lagoon or marsh; provi- sion of services would cost an estimated $300,000 per acre; and the considerable delay in selling individual parcels of land, 10 to 25 years by Prisant's estimate, led him to discount the value of the remaining real estate by 57 percent. Prisant examined other is- sues, such as possible naming rights (insurer Geico appar- ently offered US$1.6 million annually to put its name on the George Washington Bridge) and insurance costs, before calculating his final totals. Ultimately, his assessed value for Stanley Park, not including memorabilia, came in at $32 billion. The summary: $800,000 for memorabilia, $2.4 billion for the Lions Gate Bridge, $32 billion for Stanley Park. Put it together, and the whole shooting match could be yours for roughly $34.5 billion, ac- cording to Rurak and Prisant. To qualify for this offer, you should probably be Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, the House of Saud or the govern- ment of Norway. Operators are standing by to take your call. • With hundreds of health-tech entrepre- neurs and investors gathering in Vancouver this month for the eighth annual Interface digital medicine sum- mit, we run the num- bers on the changing face of B.C. health care by Melissa Edwards ( the informer ) G O F I G U R E READ THIS Jody Wilson-Raybould has served as regional chief of the British Columbia Assembly of First Nations, the member of Parliament for Vancouver Granville, and the first Indigenous minister of justice and attorney general of Canada. Her new book, From Where I Stand: Rebuilding Indigenous Nations for a Stronger Canada, is based on 25 of her speeches, lectures and writings over the past decade. "[They] all, in some way, speak to the message of Nation rebuilding and empowering Indigenous People within an even stronger Canadian federation," she notes. Wilson- Raybould groups them under five themes, including building business relationships and the duty to consult. Purich Books 224 pages, paperback, $24.95 • In a 2015 survey of B.C. patients who had used a virtual medical service... 48% would have otherwise gone to a walk-in clinic 20% would have seen their regular doctor 11% would have gone to an emergency room 13% wouldn't have accessed any medical care 69% of British Columbians think a diagnosis from a virtual appointment wouldn't be as accu- rate as from in-person visit 38% would trust a diagnosis or treatment recommendation delivered by artificial intelligence 33% would trust one delivered via a virtual visit system developed by a private tech company of primary care physicians in Canada use electronic health records In a 2018 survey, 12% of British Columbians had tried a virtual medical consulta- tion, the highest share for any Canadian region 85%

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