BCBusiness

November 2019 – Street Fighting Man

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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NOVEMBER 2019 BCBUSINESS 37 believes the foreign buyers tax was justified —to an extent. "There's a lot of unintended consequences when you try to manipulate the market with such a blunt instrument," he says. "I think it would have been better to do it in conjunction with measures to increase supply." Look at your watch In a town where condo presentation cen- tres have become part of the scenery, West- bank's elaborate show at Oakridge sticks out. "What Ian is always up to is he's trying to discern what does his consumer want that isn't being delivered," Beasley says. "A lot of other developers are generalizing the consumer. He's actually being very specific about the consumer." When it comes to marketing, Gilles- pie takes a smart and contemporary approach, Beasley says. "The people who are making progress are crossing cultural lines and crossing sectors, and deliver- ing their message in a different way," he notes. "It's one thing to say, We have 200 units for sale. It's another thing to say, I'm offering the most suave, sophisticated project in the nation right now—do you want to be a part of it?" Today's consumer has high expecta- tions and is very sophisticated, Beasley adds. "So you can't just deliver that bog- standard, average piece of junk you used to do. Look at your watch, look at your phone, look at your kitchen equipment— the same thing applies. And he's been one of the earliest developers to realize that also applies to people's homes and their neighbourhoods." Inventing what's next Ask Gillespie where Vancouver is headed over the next couple of decades, and he draws a line to his own work. "Right now we're at a bit of an inflection point, and I think that to the same extent that Wood- ward's marked a very important historical moment in our city, that Vancouver House is marking that same moment." Where some developers play it safe, "Ian has always pioneered the market," James Cheng says. Larry Beasley's take: "It's one thing to say he knows what's next. What I find more interesting is the people in our culture who don't know what's next but who just invent what's next," he says. "I'm not sure he's tapped into a cultural trend as much as he's contributed to create a cultural trend." As Gillespie pushes ahead w ith Oakridge, he reports that it's moving hundreds of units while other Vancouver projects have sold nothing. "And so if our product was always valued much higher than the rest, that gap has grown substan- tially," he says. "On the luxury end of our business, we're in the business of building Porsches. And that's just where I get more freedom to exercise more creativity." Whatever else he does, Gillespie runs a business. "People in business are very competitive," he says. "And so if we're doing this, they will try to get there, and then we'll go higher, and they'll try to get there. And so I feel like we do have that leadership position and that we have that responsibility, and I feel like that's what our mission is." ■

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