While crime in Newton has been grabbing most of the headlines, the area’s clean technology sector is quietly making a name for itself. The area typifies Surrey as a whole – a community dealing with a high rate of criminal activity while making leaps and bounds forward as one of Canada’s fastest growing cities and up-and-coming economic hubs.
The Newton area is home to a handful of burgeoning clean-tech companies including Powertech Labs Inc. (a BC Hydro subsidiary that focuses on clean-energy consulting), SP Power Farm Group Ltd. (wind turbines) and Quad-Lock Building Systems, Ltd. (insulated concrete forms).
Kevin Davis, the director of sales for Quad-Lock, said despite the negative news coverage surrounding Newton, his own experience in the area is much different.
“You hear it on the news, but we just don’t see it. We’ve had no first-hand experience when it comes to the element of crime, and I mean we’ve got pallets of steel sitting outside.”
According to the Surrey RCMP, property crime rates in Newton at the end of the third quarter are 33% per cent higher than this time last year and are 27% higher in Surrey as a whole than this time in 2013, though violent offences in the city have dropped (-2%). Yet community concern about crime, which was front and centre during the recent municipal election, has not deterred innovation and economic growth in the city. While Vancouver pushes its Greenest City 2020 Action Plan, Newton and Surrey as a whole appear ready to cash in on the green business sector.
Earlier this year, the City of Surrey’s Economic Development Division hired a dedicated staffer to lead the clean technology and agri-innovation portfolio to help support local clean-tech companies. The city also commissioned a study to see how it could better foster a clean-tech sector in the city, which will be part of a comprehensive strategy rolled out in 2015.
In October the city established the Foresight Cleantech Accelerator Centre in Newton. The centre, in partnership with Kwantlen Polytechnic University, is a business incubator for clean tech in Surrey. Foresight supports 18 clean-tech startups from across the province.
Surrey will also host the Greater Vancouver Clean Technology Expo and Championship in January at the newly built LEED-Gold Surrey City Hall Atrium. The one-day pitch event will award $10,000 cash to a clean-tech company. Surrey has six companies entered in the competition.
City of Surrey councillor Bruce Hayne said Newton has become a mecca for the area’s green-energy movement.
“Powertech Labs and a number of clean-energy-related companies are also strategically located in that area. In fact, Powertech Labs employs the highest number of PhDs outside of the university system in B.C. [Simon Fraser University] has recently located a hydrogen fuel cell lab at Powertech Lab in Newton.”
Hayne said the area’s landscape, zoning and cheap business tax rates have made it the perfect breeding ground for such companies.
“Newton’s industrial area is one of Surrey’s most active industrial zones. If you look at the area closely, it has many of the ingredients to create a viable business ecosystem for the manufacturing of clean technologies. For example, in Newton, you will find … metal foundries, computer systems development, electronics assembly. These are essential value-chain relationships for many local clean technology manufacturers.”
The area has also started to attract startups from other parts of Vancouver, luring companies across the Fraser River with lower commercial tax rates and more lenient zoning and bylaws. Curtis Mearns is the chief executive officer for SP Power Farm Group Ltd., a wind turbine startup that’s looking to build more effective turbines through structural changes to the commonly used designs. He’s originally from Kerrisdale, but when it came time to set up shop for both office and home, he said Newton was the easy choice for two reasons.
“We moved because of transportation first. Just the overall congestion, and along with traffic is parking. Transportation in general is what drew me out here. I’m sitting in my car, waiting in the queue to cross the bridge to head into Vancouver, and I’m thinking, ‘What am I doing? Why am I doing this?’
“When I got out here it was also great to see the burgeoning community as well. These companies are banding together, so to say, and this sector is kind of bubbling up because of it.”
