Access to rapid transit is “always, always, always” on Angela Robert's mind as she prepares to relocate her health-tech company from Vancouver's Broadway Corridor to Innovation Boulevard in Surrey, where three SkyTrain stops already dot the landscape.
The CEO of Conquer Mobile said in addition to easy access to Surrey business partners and like-minded research firms, knowing clients and employees won't have trouble getting to the new offices makes the move nearly painless.
Vancouver wants a subway to the University of British Columbia (UBC) – part of a strategy to service the city's health, life sciences and tech sectors along the Broadway Corridor.
Surrey already has SkyTrain stops located within Innovation Boulevard – a network of health institutions and businesses concentrated in a square-mile area at the city centre.
The largest city in B.C. has developed the kind of health and life sciences sectors the province's second-largest city desires. Meanwhile, Surrey has the kind of infrastructure Vancouver wants in order to bolster those industries further.
But Gordon Price, an urban planner and the director of Simon Fraser University's city program, said there's no need for the two cities to compete with each other.
Instead, they must ensure their respective health and life sciences organizations – which include UBC's medical school, Vancouver General Hospital (VGH), Surrey Memorial Hospital (SMH) and the research institutions clustered around them – are integrated through transit so they can complement each other.
“It's all part of the same network,” Price said. “There's room enough for both.”
That may be true, but it didn't stop Innovation Boulevard from poaching Conquer Mobile from the Broadway Corridor.
Yet Robert said transit isn't the only reason her company, which develops surgery simulation apps, is relocating.
“Complementary, not competitive”
Conquer Mobile has relied significantly on easy access to clinicians at SMH, and it's also partnering with Kwantlen Polytechnic University to create simulations to help train nurses.
Robert added it only makes sense for her company to move offices to the new location once its Vancouver lease is up within the year.
Like Price, Robert considers Innovation Boulevard and the Broadway Corridor as part of a single, greater health network.
“When you think about medical innovation across B.C., I think it's in everybody's interest to work together and have a lot of collaboration since we're all getting the same government dollars.”
Donna Jones, Surrey's manager of economic development, said in an email Innovation Boulevard is meant to develop as a hub that's “complementary, not competitive” with Vancouver.
“The Broadway Corridor and Innovation Boulevard offer different value propositions to health-tech companies,” she said, adding access to rapid transit is an obvious plus for the area.
“Companies will naturally gravitate to the location that best aligns with their specific set of needs.”
While she said there have only been some initial talks about collaboration between the boulevard and the corridor, Jones expects Surrey and Vancouver to establish continuing discourse between the two hubs.
That's not surprising to Price, who said the cities have already done an “outstanding job” collaborating while campaigning for different transit megaprojects – the UBC subway and Surrey's proposed light rail network.
A February 2013 report conducted by KPMG, and commissioned by the City of Vancouver and UBC, argued Vancouver needs a subway along the Broadway Corridor to tap into the area's economic potential.
Price said Vancouver has a much more compelling economic argument to make than Surrey.
The study specifically pointed to the significant employment in the health and life sciences sectors that already exists in the area.
There are about 8,000 health-care jobs adjacent to the Oak-Cambie health-care precinct where VGH is situated, according to the report.
Furthermore, Vancouver Coastal Health employs about 7,500 personnel in corporate offices and health-care facilities along the corridor while most of the BC Cancer Agency's 2,800 staff work in the area.
Altogether, Vancouver is home to about 23,000 workers employed in health-related fields.
Meanwhile, about 19,000 people are employed in the health-care field in Surrey, according to figures provided by the city's economic development office.
About 6,000 medical professionals work out of SMH, 180 medical offices and services companies are in the city centre, and the Fraser Health Authority has about 900 personnel – some of whom rotate to other locations – at its boulevard headquarters.
Surrey Mayor Dianne Watts told Business in Vancouver in early May that the growing demand for health-related jobs was a big reason why Innovation Boulevard came to fruition.
“There was that natural cluster and access to the clinical environment, which is really key when you're looking at innovation,” she said.
“And then on top of that you've got the research and development and the private sector as well.”
In addition to SMH and Fraser Health, the boulevard's anchors include the Jim Pattison Outpatient Care and Surgery Centre and SFU's Surrey campus – home to a number of health science research facilities and the school's Digital Health Hub.
Surrey and Fraser Health are expected to invest a total of $786 million of capital into the city by the end of 2014. That includes the expansion and redevelopment of SMH, the Critical Care Tower and the Jim Pattison Outpatient Care and Surgery Centre.
But Surrey is in its infancy developing the boulevard, and Vancouver still dwarfs the suburban upstart in virtually all respects.
Surrey's city centre accounts for 5% of the population in the region's town centres and 3% of employment, according to 2006 census data.
Meanwhile, the UBC-Broadway Corridor has 17% of the population in the region's town centres and 41% of employment.
The provincial government has invested more than $1.6 billion in research and development in Vancouver's life sciences sector since 2001, according to the Vancouver Economic Commission.
The KPMG report estimated UBC generates about $10 billion in annual economic impact and has spun off 100 companies in the life sciences sector.
These spinoff companies have gone on to create about 2,500 jobs and raise $2 billion in capital.
The corridor also drew about $480 million in health research funding in 2011-'12. The vast majority of that went to UBC ($260 million), while Vancouver Coastal Health ($99 million) and Providence Health Care ($36 million) made up about half the remainder.
And in 2010-'11 UBC attracted about $550 million in research funding for 8,000 projects.
But “the lack of a collaborative approach among stakeholders and the absence of superior transit infrastructure” are the two major weaknesses limiting the UBC-Broadway Corridor's economic potential, according to the KPMG report.
Price said the result of the regional transit funding referendum set for June 2015 would have significant influences on both the economies of Vancouver and the province, since the Broadway Corridor is the second-largest business hub in B.C. after downtown Vancouver.
“Vancouver has a stronger case to make [for transit] because of the essential need for it, because Broadway will only get more congested,” he said.
Price added if the two cities could sell their respective transit projects in one package during the referendum, it would have more of an impact on the region than anything else he could think of.
“In that case you can truly say the development along King George [Boulevard] and Broadway would be complementary in the same way transit in Vancouver and Surrey would be complementary.”
