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/838617
JULY/AUGUST 2017 BCBUSINESS 43 OPPOSITE: ALANA PATERSON; CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: COURTESY KASIAN, BOSA DEVELOPMENT, CONCORD PACIFIC out the late architect and urban development expert Bing Thom. "It wasn't about theories, and it wasn't about just talking. Everyone could see, 'This is really pretty good.'" Concord Paci•c's 1988 purchase of the Expo lands made Vancouver a hotbed of property development, says Sid Landolt, co-founder and president of S&P Real Estate Corp., a Vancouver- based marketer of luxury highrises. During the early 1990s, while the rest of North America endured a real estate recession, the city boomed. When things began to improve elsewhere in the middle of that decade, Vancouver was ready to take advantage, recalls Landolt, who has moved into Los Angeles, San Diego, San Francisco, Seattle and Waikiki since he and busi- ness partner Peter Dupuis joined forces in 1983. Over the past 25 years the pair, who typically employ 40 to 50 sta— at S&P, have sold roughly 25,000 condominiums. "There was a lack of expertise in other mar- kets and a tremendous amount of expertise in Vancouver," Landolt says. "That's when the exporting really began." This coincided with the rise of developer Intrawest Resorts Holdings Inc., which took skills sharpened at Whistler Blackcomb into ski resorts across the continent, Landolt adds. Well before Expo, Nat Bosa was building in the U.S. "Nat's had one foot over the border virtually his entire career," says Richard Weir, executive vice-president, real estate and devel- opment, with Bosa Development, whose head count in Vancouver, San Diego, Seattle and San Francisco is just over 100. "It's always been part of a diversi•cation stratešy for him." Bosa •rst went into Seattle in the late 1970s, when the Vancouver market was soft, explains Weir, who has been with the company for 20 years. He then branched out into Quebec, Hawaii, Oregon and Alberta before entering Southern California in the late '90s, starting with San Diego. "There are a lot of very sophis- ticated and well-capitalized developers in the United States, but on the West Coast, anyway, they haven't had the expertise in the residential highrise condominium space," Weir says. Today, at least half of Bosa Development's work is outside B.C., Weir estimates. In down- town Seattle, the company just completed Insignia, two residential towers with a total of 698 units. It's the city's •rst post-recession condo development and one of the largest such projects ever undertaken there, Weir says. "Nat [Bosa]'s had one foot over the border virtually his entire career. It's always been part of a diversica- tion stratey for him." — Richard Weir Bosa Development SOUTHERN EXPOSURE Bosa Development's Pacific Gate project in San Diego MODERN ENGLISH In London, Concord Pacific is building the Principal Tower FULL CIRCLE Kasian's Huashu Digital TV Campus in Hangzhou, China