While 3 Civic Plaza’s spire – a 50-storey highrise complete with luxury hotel – has become a totem marking Surrey’s entry into the big leagues of Canada’s business world, there are subtler but equally important changes underway that demonstrate that the city has come of age.
Not only are local professional offices rapidly continuing to grow – sometimes faster than the parent firms that spawned them – but the nature of the business they handle is becoming broader and more complex.
James Stewart, who has been practising law in Surrey since being called to the bar in 1980, said the clientele of his firm – which now has 24 lawyers – has changed dramatically from when he started.
“There has been an evolution in my business – and I suspect it’s the same in the other professions – from a firm that services a residential community’s needs, to a legal firm that serves the needs of commercial and business clients,” Stewart said.
His early law practice was typical of a suburban firm: lots of wills and estates, divorces and family law, real estate conveyances and criminal cases.
“Now we are doing development projects like 40-storey residential towers and complex things such as air space parcels,” he said. “We are implementing tax planning with corporate reorganizations and class-action lawsuits, things most people would not assume would be a traditional field in a suburban practice.”
Stewart, who has been active in Surrey’s business community and served last year as Surrey Board of Trade president, said local companies are increasingly more likely to engage a local law or accounting firm than seek out help from downtown offices that once were the sole repository of specialized expertise.
Leo Smyth, a PwC partner and its Fraser Valley office leader, agrees that the face of Surrey business is changing.
“There are a greater number of more mature businesses, a greater number of businesses that are thinking nationally and globally,” Smyth said. “If you look at real estate, the players are large and are attracting global capital behind them.”
Smyth said his firm has recently devoted more resources to Surrey – the Valley operations employ 65 chartered accountants – because it makes good business sense.
“Having a local office decreases your response time. It is a lot easier and more accessible [to be here] than if I was downtown. I am 10 or 15 minutes away from most of my clients. The best I can be is face to face with my client, and a lot of what we do is best done face to face.”
Smyth said Surrey events like the economic summits featuring former president Bill Clinton and former British prime minister Tony Blair are important, but he’s more impressed by Surrey mayor Dianne Watts leading a trade mission to India two years ago as a sign that Surrey is coming into its own.
“A mayor leading a trade mission to India? Just the fact that that is relevant speaks to the mindset of the entrepreneurs in the region and is a great example of how this community has matured.”
The Bank of Montreal’s Richard Denton has been involved in the Fraser Valley for more than 28 years, and effective November 1 assumes the post of vice-president, commercial services, for Surrey. He sees a combination of factors that account for BMO’s growth in Surrey by more than 20% in the last four months alone, making it one of the bank’s top growth regions in Canada.
“Surrey has definitely increased in population growth,” Denton said. “We have noticed a better business climate. And there is certainly a growing Indo-Canadian culture and they are very entrepreneurial. Surrey has really become a happening place.”
Randy Heed, Colliers International senior vice-president, has been in Surrey for 24 years and has witnessed massive changes in the last 10 years as a real estate executive.
“We’ve seen the growth of accounting and law firms,” he said, noting that PwC takes up an entire floor of the Central City Tower as do the local law firm McQuarrie Hunter and Mcilhenny Engineering. “We are seeing companies from Vancouver who are expanding out here because they recognize that this is the new city centre.’’
From a corporate perspective and an employee perspective, Surrey and the Fraser Valley represent affordability in commercial and residential real estate, as opposed to Vancouver “where there is really no [undeveloped] land left.” •
