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.
Issue link: http://digital.canadawide.com/i/1332052
ADAM BLASBERG JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2021 BCBUSINESS 57 "I n first-year university, a friend called me up, said he was going flying and asked if I wanted to come," Zack Ross recalls matter-of-factly. "I didn't know what he was talking about, but it sounded cool. So we drove out to Boundary Bay and hopped into an airplane." That day sparked a latent curiosity about flying planes himself. Growing up in Vancou- ver, Ross played with Microsoft flight simulators and remote control planes and, pre-9/11, hung out in the cockpit on com- mercial flights with his family. The university trip led to a pilot's licence and a stack of certificates to go with it. More than a weekend warrior, Ross has also found ways to make flying part of his day job. But he's not a pilot. Often, sons and daughters talk about joining the family business and injecting it with actual change. To that end, Ross, who serves as president and COO of his family's property development company, Cape Group, has made a tangible impact on the firm his grand- father launched more than 60 years ago. After all, Cape now has a plane and uses it to con- duct business more efficiently. "If we're doing projects in Kamloops and Edmonton at the same time, there's no flight from Kamloops to Edmonton," says Ross, who acknowledges that the COVID-19 pandemic has effectively put a damper on many of those trips for now. "You'd have to do either Vancouver to Kamloops, Kam- loops to Calgary, Calgary to Edmonton or Kamloops to Vancouver, back to Edmonton. We were doing it in one day: fly Developer and aviator Zack Ross mixes business with pleasure on continental trips by Nathan Caddell W E E K E N D WA R R IOR WARRIOR SPOTLIGHT Ralph Schwartzman, Zack Ross's maternal grandfa- ther, founded Vancouver- based real estate develop- ment firm Cape Group in 1956. The company, which has about 25 employees, usually looks after "be- tween five to 10 projects in various stages of develop- ment or construction," Ross says. He notes that Cape Group concentrates on rental buildings. "We've filled in the gaps with condo projects, but most of our projects have been build-and-hold," Ross adds. "We try and keep them as long as we can and rent them out. That's been our focus–not playing the game so much with condos going up and down. It's always been the slow and steady build for an economical price, rent it out, and then just wait." –N.C. ALL SYSTEMS GO It took years of training, but Ross now feels more comfortable in a cockpit than in a car Fly Guy O FF T H E C LO C K ( quality time )