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SOURCES: STATiSTiCS CANADA, BC TRUCKiNG ASSOCiATiON, VANCOUVER FRASER PORT AUTHORiTy, The Vancouver-based rm designed the Central City complex, which includes an SFU campus and was completed in 2004, as well as the elegant Sur- rey City Centre Library. Surrey Mayor Linda Hepner got to know Heeney when he worked on the library, which opened in 2011. "He's been there all along, and he shares the vision and the passion of the art of the possible with respect to our city centre," Hepner says. "He's helping us go into this second phase, if you will, of our transformation." Heeney, who has a youthful face and silver hair, might have helped design the building in which he now sits, but he looks a tad uncomfortable with corpo- rate life. Gone are the days of biking to work from Kitsilano to his low-key downtown oˆce, which he did for 28 years at BTA. Now he cycles to the SkyTrain and uses the 40-minute ride to catch up on emails. "Every month changes here. You can feel things are hap- pening," Heeney says about Surrey's progress. "It seems like the change happened in an instant, but this is something that people have been thinking about for decades." Surrey's geographic size— about two-and-a-half times bigger than Vancouver—is Heeney's biggest challenge. He's focusing on Surrey City Centre, previously known as Whalley, and chipping outward from there, aiming to create more pedestrian-friendly streetscapes. Right now Heeney is looking at land assemblies around Gateway station, to build several more towers that will likely be mixed- use residential and commercial. "I think of that area as our version of the West End," he says, nodding north toward a distant clump of towers. SCDC is owned by the City of Surrey but operates at arm's length, generating its income through development. As president, Heeney reports to an independent board, includ- ing two senior city sta˜. One of SCDC's rst ventures was the almost completed 3 Civic Plaza complex. The $100-million hotel, condominium and oˆce project was built with Surrey-based property developer Century Group; a recent tour left Heeney impressed by its high standard. His position as developer on behalf of the city means that he straddles two worlds. When SCDC launched a decade ago, developers wondered what Sur- rey was doing getting involved in their game. But the corporation purchases both city and private land and does assemblies, not actual building. Its mandate is to operate without debt, so subsi- dies from taxpayer dollars aren't an option. In fact, SCDC has to buy municipal land at market value and pay a $4.5-million annual dividend to the city.§ "Surrey is one of the fastest- growing regions in Canada, and it carries with it all kinds of challenges," says Howard Nemtin, a veteran real estate developer who sits on the SCDC board, which selected Heeney with the city's blessing. "An aspect of what Michael is doing, and what we are all trying to do, is really city building." Heeney must raise the prole of a community that is attracting almost 1,000 new residents a month, Nemtin says. (Surrey's population is expected to reach parity with Vancouver's by 2040.) With that speedy growth creating a need for new businesses, call- ing Heeney an ambassador isn't a stretch: his new role calls for spreading the word that SCDC is the ideal development partner, with local expertise and sub- stantial real estate holdings.§ Heeney knows he has a bigger task ahead of him than merely sending towers into the sky. His mission is to create a statement that will rebrand Surrey as an urban destination, with projects of lasting quality. Andy Yan, director of the City Program at SFU, puts Heeney's job in context: "He's helping to create the second downtown in metropolitan Vancouver, and that is essential to our region's growth and prosperity." That's how many people work in the B.C. transportation and warehous- ing industry—and judging by the focus of this month's Cargo Logistics Canada conference at the Vancouver Convention Centre, they need to prepare for a sea change brought on by robotics, big data, instant delivery and extreme trans- parency. "Amazon is setting the bar for everyone," says Devlin Fenton, CEO of Go99, a growing Vancouver startup whose enterprise platform connects shippers directly to independent truckers. Fenton, who will talk about the future of the logistics labour force at the conference (February 6 to 8), calls change and disruption in the supply chain the "weakest point and high- est risk" for companies today. "Every business needs to look at their supply chain and ask, 'Is this safe? Do we know where our goods are and where they are coming from?'" he advises. "There isn't one customer who will say, 'OK, I'll wait another week.' They just go next door." by Melissa Edwards We Like to Move It NUMERology 136,100 18 BCBusiness FEBRUARy 2018 CITY OF TOmORROW SOURCE: CiTy OF SURREy surrey's popula- tion as of 2016: 525,220 Most densely populated town centres: Projected popula- tion in 2046: 835,160 Most densely populated town centres: Newton 135,470 Whalley/ Surrey city centre 213,640 Whalley/ Surrey city centre 102,620 Newton 171,620 South Surrey 90,010 South Surrey 150,400

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