The speedskating oval, Richmond: The land has been zoned and construction is to begin in early 2006 for completion by April 2008. Cost: $155 million.

Organizers of the 2010 Winter Olympic Games officials may have to turn to cheaper venue designs as British Columbia enters what might be the biggest building boom in its history and double-digit inflation hits construction costs, a senior industry official says.

In Greater Vancouver alone, major non-residential construction projects worth $17 billion are queued up for the next five to seven years, said Keith Sashaw, president of the Vancouver Regional Construction Association.

Province-wide, a running tally of all types of construction projects worth $15 million or more totalled $62 billion at the end of 2004, up from $44 billion a year earlier.

But the boom has helped push construction price inflation over 10 per cent.

“When you’re faced with that kind of cost increases, it’s a negative,” said Helmut Pastrick, chief economist of Credit Union Central of B.C.

Some private-sector construction projects will likely prove to be marginal and will be forced to fold, Pastrick said. Asked whether public-sector projects may be pushed into cost overruns he said, “I wouldn’t be surprised.”

Sashaw said most Olympics-related projects haven’t got to the final design stage yet and costs can probably be shaved there.

“As you get into the design phase, you can effect savings in construction costs by . . . taking a look at alternate materials and those kinds of things.

“You can’t start talking about cost overruns when you don’t even have the design yet,” Sashaw said. “There’s no need to panic.

“The construction industry is very innovative. The design community can factor in design elements that can address these costs.”

Pastrick said the new building boom will “certainly” be B.C.’s largest in modern times, outstripping the 1985-90 boom triggered by the Expo 86 world fair. By some measures it might be bigger than the dam-and highway-building era of the 1950s and ’60s.

The provincial construction industry is expanding at a frenetic pace to keep up.

Last year alone, Sashaw said, construction employment in B.C. shot up from between 110,000 and 120,000 to 168,000 — an increase of close to 50 per cent. That included workers from other provinces migrating — or returning — to British Columbia.

“People are coming back into the province,” Sashaw said. “I suspect that a lot of the people we lost when the industry went into the slump in the 1990s are returning.

“This isn’t just the Olympics,” he added. “We’ve got a solid program of construction that’s five to seven years in length.

“People are going to be making decisions to relocate their families when they see that kind of solid performance.”

Bright as the future might be, there is a dark lining. Prices are rising, fast.

Statistics Canada’s non-residential building construction price index for Greater Vancouver, which 18 months ago was increasing by about one per cent a year, has been rising in leaps and bounds since late 2003 and last fall hit double digits, with prices averaging 10.4 per cent higher than a year earlier.

“Last year we saw some major hits on construction costs, with huge increases in steel prices and copper prices and some of the other commodity prices that go into construction,” Sashaw said.

Part of the rise is catch-up after years of below-average increases in B.C. construction, he said, and part is due to global conditions, such as rapid industrial development in China.

The pressure on steel prices should relent this year as China brings several steel mills on-stream and becomes a net exporter of steel, he said. But there will be other pressures.

“Last year, it was steel. Next year, who knows. . . . I can pretty well assure you there will be something, because construction is such a huge industry and is dependent on so many variables.”

The 2010 Winter Games official overseeing construction said the Vancouver Organizing Committee (Vanoc) expects the construction industry to help the Games stay on budget.

“There is a supply and demand situation that is going to impact us for sure,” senior vice-president Steve Matheson said.

“On the other hand, you know, the industry is very resourceful and is capable of coming up with some pretty good solutions to deal with a heated market.”

Matheson said all venue plans are on schedule, and the organizing committee is trying to kindle a kind of Olympic pride in the building industry to keep it that way, despite rising prices and risks of labour and material shortages.

“We’re going to try to appeal directly to workers to participate in the Games and take pride in that,” he said. “We think if we do a good job on that front, we’ll be able to attract companies to bid on our projects, and we will get the supply of labour that we need to build them.”

The organizing committee has been advertising in central Canada to attract interest from the building industry there, Matheson said, although most of the companies bidding on contracts are expected to be B.C.-based.

However, a labour leader said Vanoc is falling short of expectations.

Wayne Peppard, executive director of the B.C. and Yukon Territory Building Trades Council, said his group has been trying for close to a year to negotiate an agreement with Vanoc that would guarantee labour peace for Olympics construction and deal with labour costs, training, skills shortages, job safety and other issues.

“We’ve got to be able to sit down at the table and begin to work out whether or not there’s a possibility for that,” Peppard said. “At this point Mr. Matheson has said no, there is no room for an agreement, period.”

Asked if Olympics projects could be hit by labour disruptions in the absence of an agreement, he said, “That’s distinctly a possibility.”

However, Peppard said labour shares the enthusiasm about the coming boom.

“We’re looking at some pretty good times coming in the next three to 10 years.”

Source: Statistics Canada

© The Vancouver Sun 2005

The athletes’ village at False Creek: The push to build competition venues — most will start construction in 2006 and 2007 — is to give athletes, particularly Canadians, at least two seasons of practice

It has been 18 months since the International Olympic Committee and a collection of B.C. municipalities, sports organizations and community supporters embarked on one of the most ambitious cooperative sporting exercises in Canadian history.

Much has happened in the young life of the Vancouver 2010 Winter Games since IOC president Jacques Rogge and representatives of Vancouver and Whistler fixed their signatures to a contract during a summertime ceremony at the Hilton Hotel in Prague.

The heady euphoria of displacing two equally competent bids from Austria and South Korea in an act that galvanized Canadians around the world has given way to a more pragmatic and hard reality: 78 months is not an awful lot of time in which to organize the Games.

Today, only 60 of those months remain before the parade of nations will march into B.C. Place Stadium to open the 17-day Olympics, which will precede the Paralympics.

There is still so much to do.

Not one drop of concrete needed for any of the massive new venues has been poured. The ground in the pristine Callaghan Valley, site of the Nordic ski jumping and sliding centres, has not been broken. The curling venue dreamed of for Riley Park is still just that. The aging ice hockey arenas at the University of B.C. have yet to be replaced.

The creative plans for how the Games will take place are all on paper, reams and reams of paper, and in binary files of organizers’ and consultants’ computers scattered between Vancouver, Montreal, Calgary, Toronto and the seat of the IOC, Lausanne, Switzerland.

They are also lodged in the brains and hearts of people like John Furlong, the de facto soul of the Vancouver Organizing Committee (Vanoc), and a small squadron of senior executives and planners who are slowly and methodically putting together what they hope will be a lasting Canadian legacy.

Almost everything is rolling off according to the plans. And yet the road over the past year and a half has not been wholly smooth. There have been some brilliant achievements, such as the record-breaking $200-million sponsorship deal Vanoc cut with Bell Canada, a deal so rich that it covers twice over what the organizers thought they’d get from all top-tier sponsors combined.

And the small team of senior executives Furlong has surrounded himself with appear to be copies of the Energizer Bunny. They arrive in their West Pender Street offices early in the morning and they keep going until late into the night. The air miles they’ve clocked in trips to Switzerland, Italy, China, Toronto and Montreal as they search out guidance from those who have gone before them, and to implement the contractual demands of the IOC, likely represent the year’s profits of a small airline company.

This week, for example, Furlong was in Victoria on Monday, in Williams Lake and Quesnel on Thursday, and Prince George on Friday. Today he’s in Whistler to officiate at the official five-years-out Vanoc celebrations.

Vanoc is still a small organization, with fewer than 80 people working for it. By Games-time, there will be nearly 1,200, along with as many as 25,000 volunteers. Each of the vice-presidents have multiple responsibilities, and they’re having to make Solomon-like choices every day. It’s not possible to delegate responsibilities to a staff you don’t yet have.

“Every day I have a hundred things I have to do, and I have to pick the 20 that I can accomplish,” said Dave Cobb, the senior vice-president for revenue, marketing and communications. “Having said that, I have loved every day I have been here, and it has been a truly fantastic experience.”

But there have also been some early failures that have reminded Furlong and his crew of the perfidious nature of their ambitious plans.

Almost immediately after the Games were awarded, the organizers encountered the unexpected: a surging local economy, coupled with a massive demand by China for construction steel, sent construction costs shooting up.

A shortage of skilled labour and an unexpected double-digit increase in the price of steel and concrete led Vanoc chairman Jack Poole to suggest the provincial government might have to pay more.

The province, which is contributing $310 million to the construction budget and is on the hook legally for any shortfall once the Games are over, immediately refused, telling Vanoc to find the money elsewhere or cut costs.

Vanoc did both. Its rich deal with Bell will set the bar for other corporations wanting to become top sponsors.

And it embarked on a line-by-line review of its budget, leading to the first of three major changes in venues.

Vanoc broke a promise to build the $60-million Cdn speed-skating oval at Simon Fraser University after the university said costs had likely risen to $80 million.

Vanoc turned the project over to the city of Richmond, which pledged to build the oval at the original cost as part of a $153-million municipal riverside revitalization project.

But Richmond also lost another venue, the International Broadcast Centre, after the proposed site, a piece of federal land, became bogged down in the middle of a land claim by the Musqueam First Nation. Moving the IBC to the new Vancouver Exhibition and Convention Centre under construction to the west of the current convention centre will also save operating costs.

Last month Vanoc directors also agreed to move the Slalom and Giant Slalom alpine races from Blackcomb Mountain to Whistler Mountain to combine the venue with other scheduled alpine events.

It also also strongly hinted that it will make its two Nordic ski jumps a temporary affair, since it doesn’t believe there is a strong enough post-games skiing community to justify building a more expensive permanent structure.

Those actions, coupled with the Bell deal, helped bring Vanoc’s burgeoning construction budget back into line. But the continuing slide of the U.S. dollar, which has lost a third of its value over the last three years, has presented new problems. Much of the organization’s $1.345 billion Cdn operating budget will be made up from transfers from the IOC in U.S. dollars, and the sliding exchange has not helped Vanoc at all.

There were also dramatic public and personal failures.

Within months of being hired as the vice-president of human resources, Jeff Chan suddenly left Vanoc under a cloud.

Neither side would talk publicly about his departure, but some hinted at an incompatibility between Chan and Furlong, who must put together an entirely new team of people who don’t know each other but who must hit it off right at the start. Former VanCity human resources VP Donna Wilson replaced Chan.

There is a lasting backlash over the way Vanoc handled the tricky issue of protecting the Olympic brand. It was seen as a bully for going after a long-time Vancouver pizza parlour that displays the Olympic rings. It is also being counter-sued by a Squamish family for what they say is a distressing attack on them over the ownership of an Internet website containing the words “Vancouver 2010.”

Even B.C. communities, which formed a core of support for the bid, came under scrutiny by Vanoc’s trademark police after forming “2010 Legacy” committees to try to benefit from the Games. With Premier Gordon Campbell at his side for support, Cobb gently helped municipalities rename the groups “community spirit” committees.

Vanoc’s argument for brand protection was logical; if the marks are watered down, it won’t generate as much revenue as it needs and would be forced to rely more heavily on the taxpayer-backed government guarantee.

But its heavy-handedness in protecting the IOC’s emblems did not win Vanoc many friends.

However, the past 18 months haven’t been all bad news. Vanoc has so far managed to escape the troubles that have beset previous Olympics.

The public too has found increasing favor with the Olympics. A recent Ipsos-Reid poll released in January found 68 per cent of British Columbians support hosting the Olympics. That’s up 10 percentage points over another Ipsos-Reid poll done two years ago during the bid phase.

There has been no great corruption scandal like the one that rocked Salt Lake City and forced a major reform of the IOC. Unlike Athens, Vanoc isn’t behind in its construction or dramatically over budget. And unlike Turin, the site of the 2006 Winter Games, it doesn’t have the kind of vicious national, regional and local political infighting for which the Italians are legendary. It has yet to have a visit from police investigators the way recent Olympic committees have.

And what of the next few years?

Organizing the Games is not the slow, measured, long-term affair of a corporation that will be around for generations. It is more like the life-cycle of an insect; short and frenetic.

This spring, clearing will begin on some of the 300 hectares of land in the Callaghan valley needed for the Nordic and sliding centres. Last week, more than 200 potential contractors turned up at a Vanoc briefing to find out how to bid. Construction of the jumps and the slide will begin in the summer.

Later this month, Vanoc and UBC will announce which of three short-listed design-and-build proponents will get the contract to build a four-ice arena later this year.

Richmond has already rezoned the land for its new speed-skating oval and is now holding open houses. Construction is expected to start in early 2006.

Construction of most other venues will begin in 2006 and 2007, including the two Olympic villages in Whistler and False Creek, the curling venue, and renovations to B.C. Place and GM Place.

As well, there’s a lot of other construction taking place in B.C. not directly related to the Olympics but certainly affecting it: the $600-million upgrade of the Sea-to-Sky Highway, the $1.72-billion high-speed RAV line and the $565-million expansion of the Vancouver Trade and Exhibition Centre.

A lot of the push behind the construction is so Vanoc can open the venues by 2008 to give athletes — particularly Canadians — at least two seasons of practice.

“So far, we’re on track with all our planned start dates, and we’re in pretty good shape that way,” said Steve Matheson, the vice-president of venue construction. “We want to make sure that we’ve got two full seasons for training for our Canadian athletes on these new venues so that we can be as competitive as possible for the Games.”

Security has also ramped up; a team of RCMP officers is now permanently attached to the Vanoc office as it coordinates security and anti-terrorism strategies.

Sport development is also at a crucial crossroads. Cathy Priestner-Allinger, Vanoc’s VP of sport, says many of the governing sport bodies will be examining venue plans this year to make sure they comply with international standards.

On a national level, Vanoc is also a major partner in an ambitious $110-million COC-Sports Canada dream to have Canada place first in the medal count by winning at least 35 medals in 2010. It’s a long way off from that mark, having placed 19th in the Athens Summer Games, tied with Bulgaria.

The success of the program hangs on whether the federal government will pay for half the program. Earlier this month, the IOC’s Rogge encouraged Ottawa to join the so-called “Own The Podium” program. But so far the feds have not anted up.

The provincial government, which will bring in its own budget Tuesday, is considering joining the program.

Vanoc this year will also embark on a massive cross-Canada effort to make the Vancouver Games relevant to the rest of the country.

“This really is Canada‘s Games. When you look at what the Olympics stands for, which is fair play, peace and unifying people around the world, those Olympic values are very closely aligned with the values of Canadians,” Cobb said.

At the end of April, Vanoc will unveil its logo, which Cobb believes will be another unifying mark for the Games.

Money, or the lack of it, is a main driver here, because Vanoc has been operating on a $25-million line of credit with the Royal Bank of Canada. There are strings attached to the $620 million the provincial and federal governments are contributing to the construction budget. The IOC’s operating budget contribution — which has yet to be negotiated — is a long way off.

So this year the pressure is on Vanoc to negotiate most of the top-tier sponsorship categories it is contemplating, including banking, automotive, airline, brewery, lotteries, petroleum and energy. It is already negotiating with the banking sector and could make an announcement within weeks. Several banks are interested, including CIBC and RBC, which has been the Canadian Olympic Committee’s sponsor for more than half a century.

One looming battle is just how much the IOC will give Vanoc. In the last year it has negotiated an unprecedented $4 billion Cdn in television marketing deals with NBC, the European Broadcasting Union and a Bell Globe-media-Rogers Communications consortium for broadcasting the 2010 Winter and 2012 Summer Games.

It was far more than the IOC had expected, thanks largely to the fact the Winter Games will be in Vancouver. But it also said last year it would no longer share broadcast revenues with its Olympic organizing committees on a percentage basis, but rather on a fixed sum plus inflation.

Tightly financed Vanoc, however, has its eye fixed firmly on getting a larger piece of the pie. “Our position is that we will be sitting down with the IOC later this year to determine what the fair share of the TV rights to Vanoc should be,” Cobb said recently.

It’s not all about money, though. Furlong, whose passion and eloquence are credited with tipping the balance in favour of Vancouver during the IOC deliberations, said the Olympics are about eliciting the best in people. Over the last 18 months, he’s seen that happen time and time again. The recent Ipsos-Reid poll validated his view, he said, that people have begun to see the Vancouver Games as a unique event in Canadian history.

Corporate support — and not just for the purposes of promotion — has also been remarkable, he said.

“We’ve met with dozens of corporations over the last year, and there is a huge desire in the corporate community to become engaged in staging the Games,” he said. “It’s not about them wanting to be sponsors as much as it is them wanting to do what they can to help it be a success.”

On his road trip to Williams Lake, Quesnel and Prince George, Furlong was struck by how much inspiration the Olympics has created.

“The people up here get what we’re doing. The rest of Canada gets what we’re doing. It’s a remarkable discovery to see people who live outside Vancouver and Whistler excited about these Games.”

© The Vancouver Sun 2005

CREDIT: Jon Murray, The Province Vancouver Mayor Larry Campbell demonstrates a new garbage truck yesterday.

Vancouver Mayor Larry Campbell was talking trash at city hall yesterday.

He reminded homeowners they have until March 31 to choose the size of their new garbage containers before the city’s automated pickup service begins.

“I think it’s a huge step forward,” said Campbell. “With these new trucks and containers, residents will be getting a choice, convenience and new improvements to their service in their neighbourhoods.”

The city is disposing of its one-size-fits-all garbage service and is joining Prince George and Port Coquitlam by going fully automated. The city has ordered 174,000 wheeled garbage bins and 29 trucks at a cost of $10 million.

“By allowing the residents to choose the container . . . we’re actively seeking reductions in our waste, as well as trying to provide fair pricing for everybody in the city,” said Campbell.

The containers will be supplied by the city, but come in five different sizes.

The annual fees will range from $75 for the 75-litre cart, up to $170 for the 360-litre container. Extra garbage bags will cost $2 apiece.

Last year, the average family paid $91 for garbage disposal.

Kevin Van Vliet, the city’s manager of solid waste, said some people with garbage enclosures that won’t fit the new carts have complained.

The new service to 87,000 homes starts in July and the city will start collecting yard trimmings in January.

© The Vancouver Province 2005

CREDIT: Bill Keay, Vancouver Sun Lance Bracewell owns >Bracewell Marine group in Richmond that is currently building a $6-million US yacht for Fox Sports.

The real absurdity of Gilligan’s Island, the iconic 1960s TV comedy re-packaged on TBS this season as a reality show among competing castaways, is what was blueblood Thurston Howell III doing on a tub like the S.S. Minnow anyway?

If his ship had really come in, Howell, like today’s multi-millionaires, would be looking for a fabulous gin barge far beyond a boat with a cramped quarters and a tiny head like the Minnow.

The search for luxury befitting his station in life would begin in Florida at the annual Fort Lauderdale International Boat Show, the mecca of the industry. There, every October, an armada of high-end B.C. yacht builders exhibit their craft to tempt potentates, playboys and corporation presidents into a look that sets them apart from the crowd for the long, yacht summer.

Reflecting the happy-days-are-here-again climate for the well-heeled under the administration of George Bush, some B.C. boatbuilders have their order books full, keeping up with the demand. Favourable tax treatment by Uncle Sam allows owners to declare their vessels as a second home or a business expense. And tax loopholes permit some big-boat captains to deduct all their expenses — from moorage costs to fishfinders.

For a certain level of American yacht owner, exchange rates and currency differences aren’t a big consideration. They want a sense of exclusivity in their big-ticket purchases, which is why Ben Vermeulen’s boatyard on River Road in Delta has continued to steam ahead in an industry where others have dipped below the waterline.

In the past five years, a number of the province’s custom yacht builders have gone under because of production problems, lawsuits and the strengthening Canadian dollar, lessening the buy-in-B.C. appeal for American buyers looking to strike a bargain.

West Bay SonShip — Vermeulen’s company — has been able to weather the storm and prosper because of its reputation. A marriage of high-tech and old-world craftsmanship, West Bay has fashioned an exalted niche among picky customers based on its core values of quality and honesty.

“We appeal to a market that is not just looking for a lower price,” says president Wes Vermeulen, Ben’s son. “At the end of the day, they know we’ll be here to support the product. We treat our customers like they’re extended family and they stick with us when they go looking for a bigger boat. They know they’re not dealing with a huge corporation doing multiple boats.”

Ben Vermeulen, a Dutch immigrant who came to Canada in 1959 and walked the streets of North Vancouver looking for work, started with nothing, except a pair of skilled hands, an entrepreneurial spirit and a genius for looking at a piece of carpentry or machinery and knowing instinctively how it all fits together.

Trained as a goldsmith in Holland, he found work with a wrought-iron fabricator soon after arriving in Canada. He did so well in the heavy metal business that Vermeulen started a small steel company in Burnaby, bidding on transmission line contracts for power dams.

In 1967, at the urging of an employee who loved boats, Vermeulen launched West Bay Boat Builders, even though he had never been a boater, much less owned one or built one before.

“We started from a business point of view, but it takes a passion to do this kind of work,” Vermeulen says. “It’s a labour of love. I have other hobbies, but my main hobby is still this business. The biggest blessing we hope to get out of this is to pass the business on to our kids.”

Wes, the company president, Bas (short for Sebastian, VP of design and production) and daughter Rochelle Vermeulen (interior design), are all main players in the company, along with daughter-in-law Lynda and son-in-law Danny, manager of the engineering department.

Ben Vermeulen, who is 70 but fitter-looking than the proverbial 60-year-old Swede, began with an abandoned fishing shed and a patch of swampy land on the banks of the Fraser that he rehabilitated, load by load, with fill and a wheelbarrow. Initially, West Bay stayed afloat by building fishing trawlers, water taxis, log salvage boats and doing repair work before taking a leap of faith into pleasure craft. Today, the company has nine acres of production space and is looking to acquire more, and has 300 employees working two shifts to turn out luxury motor yachts that make a statement. The statement is that you have to be very rich to own one.

West Bay’s most popular boats range from 58 to 103 feet, hand-crafted in fibreglass and exotic woods from African Wenge to Carpathian Elm, and sell for between $2 million and $9 million US, although options can push the cost much higher. (One customer, for instance, required inlaid diamonds in his shower surround). The company recently introduced its latest model, a 50-foot “entry level” boat that sells for $1.2 million US. The new design appeals to West Bay owners who might want to down-size, although the norm in the industry is to step up to ever increasing lengths of conspicuous consumption.

In the not too distant past, 80 feet was considered the threshold of true yachtdom. However, when Microsoft owner Paul Allen pulled into Cannes last year with the 414-foot-long Octopus, complete with helicopter launching pad, personal submarine, speedboat, swimming pool, music studio and basketball court, it signalled a new race between boys with the biggest toys. Hypercompetitive Oracle CEO Larry Ellison took up the challenge, told his designer to set stretch out the blueprints, and launched a 460-foot boat in the fall, the Rising Sun. Alas, the latter is about be eclipsed by the Prince of Dubai. His sumptuous, 525-foot vessel being built in the Middle East is immeasurably grander and 40-foot longer than a Royal Navy destroyer.

By comparison, some of the largest personal power yachts plying Canada’s west coast are Jim Pattison’s 150-foot, Louisiana-built Nova Spirit, which he used to entertain ex-presidents, prime ministers and premiers before it caught fire last September; the 125-foot luxury yacht Taconite, built in Vancouver in 1930 for Bill Boeing of passenger aircraft fame; and the 115-foot Hotei, launched in 1986 and used as the royal yacht to transport the Prince of Wales and Diana at the opening of Expo 86. All are about to be overshadowed by the new giant on Burrard Inlet — a 220-230-foot power boat under construction in North Vancouver for Dennis Washington of the Washington Marine Group.

Hotei was built at the venerable McQueen’s shipyard on the Fraser River. The company doesn’t really concern itself with newspaper publicity or the Canadian market.

“We do almost all our business in the U.S.,” says Doug McQueen, a second-generation boat builder. “I don’t want to say anything about our company.”

“The yacht building business in B.C. isn’t very media-savvy,” says Peter Robson, editor of Pacific Yachting magazine. “We really should be hearing a lot more about them.”

Not only is custom yacht building in B.C. an exclusive industry, it’s a secretive one. According to the British Columbia Yacht Building Association, formed in 2004, there are upwards of 1,500 employees working in the industry, generating from $150-$200 million US in annual sales. Since 90 per cent of production is going stateside, though, there isn’t a need to make waves and play to a Canadian market.

West Bay, for instance, has sales offices in Seattle, Newport Beach, Calif., and Fort Lauderdale, but none in Canada besides the head office at 8296 River Road. One of the company’s new 50-footers will be available for viewing at a False Creek marina during an invite-only open house. The company said the open house would not be affected by the labour dispute which has been threatening the Vancouver International Boat Show at B.C. Place, which was due to begin Wednesday.

“Historically, our customer base is the U.S., up until a month ago when we introduced the 50-footer,” says West Bay CEO Glenn Wong. “They’ve had a West Bay before, and then they come back for a bigger boat. We have one customer who is on his third West Bay in three years. He’s from New York and he’ll keep the boat in Florida.”

Wong has been building brands and markets around the world for 20 years as an executive with Electronic Arts Canada, Rogers Cable, B.C. Hot House and Nabob Foods. He came on board nine months ago to help ease the operational transition from one generation of Vermeulens to another. West Bay has ambitious plans to double production and sales by 2010 and build a 125-footer (the company’s biggest yacht to date is 110 feet).

With big pocketbooks, strong personalities and accompanying idiosyncrasies, West Bay‘s customer base is drawn from well-to-do entrepreneurs looking to announce their arrival in the leisure class, executives of Fortune 500 companies or those from the film industry. They have scads of discretionary income and demand discretion from their builder. In the U.S., Tiger Woods launched a multi-million-dollar lawsuit against Christiansen Yachts of Seattle, his boat builder, after the company broke a confidentiality agreement and publicized its involvement with the golfer.

Not surprisingly, West Bay is very reluctant to divulge its client list, except to say that nearly all have been previous boat owners who definitely know what they want. And what today’s yacht owner wants is a boat loaded with high-end appliances, technology (plasma-screen TVs), toys (wine coolers, pianos), artwork and beautiful cabinetry, which West Bay crafts in its woodworking shop.

“It reflects their taste, their design, the special things that they want,” Wong says. “They’re the kind of people who don’t need to drive a Ferrari to impress anybody. The boat becomes an expression of the lifestyle they want.”

The Vermeulens‘ personal yacht, a 107-footer, has five staterooms with en suite heads to accommodate family and grandchildren, and crew quarters for four.

Nonetheless, the norm in the B.C. industry is that boat builders don’t get rich catering to the wealthy.

Lance Bracewell, the 51-year-old owner of Bracewell Marine Group near Shelter Island in Richmond, is a benchwork and joinery graduate of BCIT, drives a Pontiac Grand Am and makes the daily commute to work from his home in Abbotsford.

“You do it more for the pride of making a boat,” says Bracewell, who employs about 50 skilled workers at his yard. “Contrary to what people might think, we don’t operate on huge [profit] margins. It’s about three to five per cent. We don’t have thousands of people knocking on our doors for the type of product we build.”

Bracewell will have the 54-foot Pacesetter and the 62-foot Secret Cove moored at the False Creek Yacht Club this week as part of the floating component of the Vancouver Boat Show to interest Canadian buyers, many of whom jet in from Alberta. “Why not show these boats and see what happens?” he says. “There’s a lot of [Alberta] money coming out to the coast.”

Bracewell’s American profile is expected to get a substantial boost when a steel-hulled, $4 million US sportsfisher is launched later this year. Under construction at Bracewell’s Richmond yard, the boat, designed by noted marine architect Patrick Bray of White Rock, is to be featured weekly in the Fox Sports Television show Inside Fishing, recreating the oceanic travels of Zane Grey. A prolific writer of 60 Western novels (Riders of the Purple Sage, among others), Grey, who died in 1939, was also was a great storyteller of fishing adventures.

“We shopped this boat from Louisiana to Seattle to Brazil,” says the show’s executive producer, Michael Fowlkes. “Lance just impressed us with his craftsmanship and the fact everything is under one roof. We’re projecting a launch in late summer or early fall of this year, which is just phenomenal, since he didn’t start laying the keel until August of last year.”

Unquestionably, the province’s top specialized aluminum yacht-building shipyard is ABD Aluminum Yachts, under Second Narrows Bridge in North Vancouver. Aluminum may have a bad rap because of the province’s high-speed fast ferry fiasco, but for yachtsmen seeking a long-range, around-the-world experience, it’s the way to go. For $11 million US [what it takes to put a 120-footer in the water), the owner not only gets a boat that can withstand rough seas but one that is rust-free and elegant — the decks, wheelhouse and galley are laid with teak and holly; the all-metal hull and superstructure are finished off with all-grip paint and gleam like porcelain. An aluminum yacht can go from Vancouver to Hawaii on a 16,000-gallon fuel tank or sail from Vancouver through the Panama Canal to waiting buyers in Florida and the Caribbean, rather than being shipped by freighter as in the case of a fibreglass boat.

Al Dawson, who founded ABD in 1987 with partner Burton Drody, started his working life as a 13-year-old apprentice joiner in a furniture company. He studied the marriage of aluminum and boatbuilding at Matsumoto Shipyards — which occupied the Dollarton waterfront of North Vancouver for 40 years — before it closed its doors. He is 80 now, but like the material he uses, Dawson shows no sign of gathering rust.

Around the shipyard almost seven days a week, he has neither the time nor the inclination to own a yacht.

Says Dawson, “I go out in my canoe or my kayak 10 times a year, and that’s all the boating I need.”

© The Vancouver Sun 2005

Proposed Wal-Mart leaves a greener footprint

Big-box boom Source: Wal-Mart

Wal-Mart Canada has unveiled a $30-million-plus, environmentally correct design — with windmills, geothermal heating and 250 dogwood trees — for its controversial store on Vancouver‘s Southeast Marine Drive.

The design aims to appease Vancouver city council members who in 2003 told the U.S.-based retailing giant to come up with the “greenest” design possible if it wants a chance to build its first store in Vancouver.

“It’s an earnest response to the challenges council put before us and it’s certainly a design that recognizes the sensibilities of Vancouver,” Wal-Mart representative Kevin Groh said in an interview.

Vancouver architect Peter Busby spent 22 months on the unique plans, which were submitted Wednesday to city officials. Public hearings and city council consideration are still months away but Busby said he’s excited at the prospect of Wal-Mart building its first green Canadian store in Vancouver.

“It’s a breakthrough project,” he said in an interview.

“It’s one thing to do an expensive demonstration building for a university, but to bring it right down to the ground where people touch and feel it every day is very satisfying.”

Busby said Wal-Mart has built three green U.S. stores in the past decade but none of those has all the features found in the proposed Vancouver store, which are expected to cut energy use by 37 per cent while reducing water use by 48 per cent and carbon dioxide emissions by 40 per cent.

The Wal-Mart proposal in Vancouver has generated considerable public debate for years.

On Wednesday, those opposed to the project said the new “green” design does little to alleviate their basic concern: That the result would still be a mega-

store drawing customers away from the city’s small neighbourhood shopping centres and generating a huge amount of traffic.

But Shirley Chamaschuk, 75, a resident of the area since 1963, was among several who welcomed the proposal Wednesday. “I think it would be great,” she said. “It’s too far [to get to other Wal-Marts].”

The proposed new 120,000-square-foot store features geothermal heating and cooling from a series of 60-foot-deep wells that will be drilled beneath the store. Three windmills on the site will provide about half the power necessary to drive the geothermal system.

The building’s roof features skylights that will reflect daylight back into the store, reducing the need for artificial light. The roof will collect water, with a cistern and pool that will store water for domestic use inside.

Rainwater on the site will drain into the ground naturally, as the parking lot for 755 cars will be made of permeable asphalt that allows water to pass through. Wal-Mart says the development will have an “orchard-like” setting because 250 mature, six-metre-high dogwood trees will be planted throughout the project.

Project developer Darren Kwiatkowski said the new design proves Wal-Mart will do everything it can to gain city approval.

“It’s about retail land use, and whether it’s Zellers or Canadian Tire or Wal-Mart on the label shouldn’t enter into council’s decision,” he said. “The only issue is if this is a good urban design and a good building for the community.”

Groh said the cost of the Vancouver project will be “significantly” higher than other Wal-Mart stores in Canada, which normally cost about $20 million to develop. (The $30-million-plus cost of the proposed new Vancouver store includes $20 million in land costs, so the building itself will cost more than $10 million.)

Groh said some of the expense can be justified by the sales the new store is expected to generate and by the value of being able to monitor the effectiveness of the sustainability features.

Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., the U.S. parent company, recorded global sales last year of $256 billion US — a sum larger than the gross domestic product of Austria.

Last month, Surrey council approved plans to build a Wal-Mart in South Surrey following a stormy public hearing that stretched into the following morning. Wal-Mart has also been rejected in Surrey, with a proposed Scott Road store turned down in 2000.

Canadian Tire, meanwhile, has proposed building a new 130,000-square-foot store near the Vancouver Wal-Mart development — on the old Chrysler Canada property on Southeast Marine Drive between Ontario and Manitoba streets. The project would feature a Canadian Tire store and about 125,000 square feet of other retail stores.

WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT THE PROPOSED WAL-MART SITE?:

I don’t need any more shopping around here. It’s a lot of garbage you don’t need.

Alice Gmuer, 58

Nurse and local resident

I think it would be great. That traffic coming back [from other Wal-Marts] is horrible.

Shirley Chamaschuk, 75

who has lived in the area since 1963

If people can get what they want at affordable prices, who am I to tell them where they can shop?

Erin Gorby, 28

Arborist who works in the area

Vancouver needs a Wal-Mart, especially here at Main and Marine.

Khurram Butt, 28

taxi driver who lives near the proposed Wal Mart

We have lots of traffic here. More traffic will be coming [if they add a Wal-Mart].

Bhupinder Dhillon, 62

building supply warehouse worker whose house looks onto the proposed site

© The Vancouver Sun 2005

VANCOUVER – Be careful when you’re tearing down an old house. You never know what you’ll find in the walls.

Recently I went with my friend Murray Bush to see an old house in Kitsilano that had been sold. Another friend had said there were a couple of old stoves in which I might be interested.

The stoves were indeed old, but they were heavy and seemed to be a little too much hassle to move. The house was a small, nondescript stucco job from the 1930s, and didn’t have any outstanding architectural features. But the interior was brimming with all sorts of stuff, partly because it had been occupied by the same family since it was built.

I wound up buying a car-load of old magazines from the 1930s to the ’70s for $10, then bought an old bicycle seat for another $10. There were so many magazines, the back end of Murray‘s Volvo sagged visibly from the weight.

On the way out the door, I asked if we could look upstairs. The homeowners said sure, and I climbed the stairs and found more cool old junk, including a couple of old wood- cabinet radios.

Alas, the radios were pretty trashed. But one of the homeowners said there was another old radio shoehorned into the rear of the attic. I climbed in and found a tall Lyric radio, probably from the 1920s.

It was wedged in pretty tight, but I managed to move it near the door to the attic. But a wooden brace got in the way, and it looked like it might be impossible to get it out.

Murray said “Let me at it.” He proceeded to rip out some insulation, then shimmied the radio into a bedroom. I offered one of the homeowners $20 for all three radios.

Murray came out of the attic and said: “I think you should give it to us for free.”

The homeowner looked at him, and Murray said: “This fell out of the insulation.”

Murray handed him a stack of money, encased in a clear plastic bag. As it turns out, the family that owned the house had found $156,000 hidden away in the house by their parents, who are now deceased.

Apparently, the parents didn’t trust banks so they kept their money hidden in the nooks and crannies of their house, which was built by their contractor dad.

The homeowner had a very happy look on his face when we left.

He gave us the radios for free.

© The Vancouver Sun 2005

Canadians report a higher incidence of identity theft even though they are far more cautious than Americans about sharing their personal information, according to a new survey.

Ten per cent of respondents to an EDS Canada Inc. poll in January said they had been victims of identity theft or had experienced a cyber crime resulting from unauthorized access to personal information.

Yet Canadians were far more likely than Americans to demand that companies go the extra mile to safeguard information, a similar EDS poll taken in September in the U.S found. For example, 80 per cent of Canadians said an organization should validate at least three pieces of identification before issuing a client a new password to access an account, compared to just 13 per cent of Americans.

“How come Canadians get ripped off more often? We just can’t explain it right now,” said Michel Brazeau, business leader for EDS in eastern Canada.

He noted Canadian consumers and organizations — including governments — are ahead of their American counterparts at e-banking, applying for services and otherwise sharing information online. As a result, information may be more valuable in Canada, and therefore more attractive to criminals.

Also, “in the U.S. there is a whole lot more in-home marketing,” Brazeau said. Such activity has been severely restricted in Canada since new federal and provincial privacy laws came into effect between 2002 and 2004. Americans are more familiar and comfortable with legitimate telephone and Internet solicitation.

An overwhelming majority of Canadians, 86 per cent, preferred to have their access denied rather than compromise the security of their accounts if an organization cannot verify their identity.

Respondents rated banks and credit card companies the best at safeguarding their identity. Retailers and travel agencies and consumer electronics companies were perceived as the least trustworthy with personal information.

Still, consumers give away their information too freely. Although Canadians are very protective of their social insurance numbers, 61 per cent will give out their postal code when asked; 54 per cent, their address; 12 per cent, their account numbers; and 10 per cent, their passwords.

“I’m surprised there are that many people who will hand out their passwords,” Brazeau said, cautioning against disclosing information even when you call an institution directly,. “Be wary of what you share, even if you have a relationship with the organization.”

When you’re not sure who is on the other end, seeking to “update your account information,” don’t feel you have to be polite.

“The best advice I can give to people is to hang up,” Brazeau said. “If it’s really your bank, they’ll call back.”

The EDS survey, conducted by Internet between Jan. 13 and. 17 by Ipsos-Reid, drew responses from 1,735 Canadians.

The results are considered accurate within 2.4 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.

TOP 10 TIPS FOR PROTECTING YOUR IDENTITY:

– Never provide any personal information in response to an unsolicited request.

– Always ask or look for contact information on unsolicited requests. If you believe the request may be illegitimate, try contacting the company yourself.

– Review your account statements regularly to ensure all transactions are in order.

– Check your credit report regularly to ensure no new credit accounts have been opened in your name. This can be done through the three major credit bureaus (Equifax, Experian and Trans Union) or through a third party such as Fair Isaac (http://www.myfico.com).

– Do not use information that can be used to steal your identity — such as SINs, account numbers, birth dates, names, e-mail addresses or telephone numbers — as passwords or account numbers.

– Limit the amount of personal information you divulge over the phone or to websites, and be sure you know how this information will be used.

– Review the privacy policies or statements posted on websites of the companies with which you do business to ensure you understand how the information you provide will be used and shared with other organizations.

– Be sure you are applying patches and updates to your personal computer’s operating system on a regular basis. If using a Windows operating system, be sure to use the automatic updates feature.

– Ensure you have current anti-virus and firewall software installed on your PC and enable the automatic update feature. Run virus scans regularly and remove any spyware found.

– If you are the victim of identity theft, go to the Identity Theft website set up by the Canadian Privacy Commissioner at http://www.privcom.gc.ca/fs-fi/02_05_d_10_e.asp. There you will find a list of resolution steps to take if your identity has been stolen.

Source: EDS Canada

© The Vancouver Sun 2005

Once touted as a wireless home phone replacement for all Lower Mainlanders, City Fido is hanging up on most of the suburbs and abandoning its unlimited calling plan.

As of March 1, Surrey, Delta, Coquitlam, Port Coquitlam, Pitt Meadows, Maple Ridge, Langley, Aldergrove, Mission, Abbotsford and Chilliwack will no longer be served by City Fido.

New users of City Fido — now a part of Rogers Wireless — will charge new customers $45 a month for 750 anytime minutes or $65 a month for 1,500 minutes.

And if they leave the central coverage area they’ll have to pay 50 cents a minute extra on top of any long-distance charges.

Established customers with contracts will continue to get the old rates and service area for as long as they renew their contracts.

And Fido will continue to offer its regular cellular plans that don’t restrict users to the Vancouver core including the North Shore, Vancouver, Burnaby, New Westminster and Richmond.

“I think, in essence, they’re trying to kill City Fido,” telephone analyst Ian Angus, president of Toronto-based Angus TeleManagement Group said Friday. “At 50 cents a minute to call outside of the local area you’d have to be somebody rather strange to want the service.”

Fido president Alain Reaume, who is also an executive vice-president with Rogers, disagreed, saying in an interview that City Fido would now go from being a mass market to a niche product, aimed at young urbanites who rarely venture outside the city core.

“If you take somebody who lives in Surrey and works in downtown Vancouver and travels from time to time to Seattle or Portland, well, the new City Fido is probably not the best product for them,” said Reaume. “But for the person who lives in an apartment close to Stanley Park and works downtown and spends the weekend around town it would be a very good product.”

Reaume said that while City Fido worked well for his old company Microcell — since purchased by Rogers — it wasn’t economical for a larger player to continue the service.

“And as an executive vice-president for Rogers I have to take that into account now,” said Reaume.

Angus said that with the purchase of Microcell by Rogers — which intends to enter the home phone market with Internet telephones — Canada now has three cellular carriers who don’t want to compete with wireline phone rates or service.

He added that cellular is in danger of becoming an expensive side service rather than a potentially direct competitor for land-line phones.

Another Toronto telephone analyst, Brian Sharwood, a principal of the SeaBoard Group, said the only hope Canadians might have for lower cellular rates might lie now with Virgin Mobile Canada, which will be entering the market this year using Bell Canada‘s network.

“They can charge below what Bell is charging them if they feel that profit is not as important as getting the number of subscribers up and getting customers to understand the coolness of the Virgin name.”

Angus, however, disagreed, saying that Virgin’s market was primarily the prepaid youth market and that, in any case, they are owned 50 per cent by Bell.

© The Vancouver Sun 2005

CREDIT: Peter Battistoni, Vancouver Sun Hani Lammam (above) is the Cressy Development executive managing the four-tower Hamptons Park project in Richmond.

Fifteen years ago an “amenity centre” in a condominium project basically meant the place had an extra room in the basement for social gatherings or maybe a pool if you were lucky.

But today, the centre is more like a luxury club, boasting such features as a pool, hot tub, steam and sauna room, party room with full kitchen, yoga and pilates studio, a billiards lounge, outdoor barbecue, private theatre and, in the one recent Vancouver development, a fleet of kayaks and two 10-pin bowling alleys.

“Clubs” are increasingly being built in larger condominium projects by developers eager to sell the full lifestyle package to target markets, like “active singles” or “empty-nesters.”

In some municipalities these clubs or amenity centres are actually a requirement by city officials who fear the increase in population from large developments will put too much of a strain on city amenities.

“In Richmond if you don’t provide an amenity centre they will charge you a levy,” says Michael Ferreira, president of Urban Analytics, a research and consulting company specializing in the new home market.

“The developers will argue they already pay development cost charges which are to help the city build amenities.”

But Ferreira noted despite the controversy, in many cases developers are happy to offer amenity centres or clubs because they appeal to their target market.

“They (clubs) can add value to a development. The advantage is they provide a meeting place for residents. Even though you live close you often don’t see a lot of people. They help give a development more of a community feel,” he said.

“In the downtown condo developments they’ll make them a little more intricate and some developers are being careful to see exactly what amenities are being used.”

For instance, in downtown Vancouver it was noticed that more and more families with children were buying high-rise apartments and families said they wanted more space available to them in the building. The solution for some developments was expanding the family room.

“Having a parent room is great to take a child to burn off steam outside the unit,” said MAC Real Estate Solutions co-owner Cameron McNeill, who added an amenity package could be as simple as a television lounge to a full spa-like resort.

In any event, he said, the reality of downtown real estate is buyers are looking for activities to do “outside their four walls.”

“If you have a 400-square-foot apartment and you want to entertain you can do it in an amenity room. At first I thought it (amenity centres) was a marketing tool but I can see they are being used. In some downtown developments it’s difficult to book a room (for entertaining).”

But both McNeill and Ferreira say developers are being careful to be cost-effective with any club they build to ensure it remains cost-effective as far as monthly maintenance fees go.

McNeill estimates maintenance fees can range from $90 for a 400-square-foot studio to $300 or more for the more luxurious downtown units.

Ferreira advises anyone buying into a project with a club ensure they are comfortable with the monthly fee and consider what will happen as the project ages.

CREDIT: Stuart Davis, Vancouver Sun The 5,000-square-foot clubhouse at Langley’s Sagebrook development includes a billiard table, fireplace, kitchen and exercise room.

“Ask as the project ages will the maintenance cost increase as well?” he said.

They noted some developers targeting the budget-conscious buyer solve this problem by not putting pools into the project because they are more costly to maintain, or they build an outdoor pool, which doesn’t require year-round maintenance.

“It’s important to understand consumers’ needs,” said McNeill. “Pools are generally under-used. Instead, we’ll see a gym, steam room, preferably his and her and a dry sauna.”

He noted the Tandem project in Burnaby, now under construction by Anthem Properties, is a good example where first-time home buyers living in two towers will share an amenity building in the middle of the towers. This club does not have a pool.

“The buyers were budget conscious and they liked this building offered a lifestyle. They will have a full spa, gym, sauna, hot tub, a big party room with a large screen TV, and leather couches. It feels like a sports bar,” said McNeill, adding without the pool the monthly maintenance fees are affordable, ranging from $120 to $200.

Vancouver resident France Stewart and her husband Alexander take possession next month of a condo in the 32-storey Park West project by Concord Pacific, which overlooks Granville Island.

Residents of Park West and three other nearby towers that Concord built around the new George Wainborn Park will have access to Club Viva, a 70,000-square-foot full-amenity building.

“It would be impossible for just one highrise to afford it but this way the (maintenance) cost is shared and it provides a luxury,” said Stewart.

She said the club has a large pool, a “spectacular” gym, a party room, two theatre rooms and a library.

“Clubs are really important for resale. That’s what people are looking for,” she said.

She added having a club on site also gets people out of their cars and enjoying a quality lifestyle without having to stray far from home.

This was certainly the appeal for buyers of Sagebrook, a Polygon development in Langley that was geared toward first time buyers. There a 5,000-square-foot resort-style clubhouse will provide residents a space with a large, high-ceiling guest room as well as a billiards table and stone fireplace. There’s a fully equipped kitchen and an exercise room as well.

Another new development that offers two full clubhouses to be shared by four towers is Hamptons Park by Cressy Development in Richmond. Both club houses have indoor pools surrounded by windows to let in the full light, his and her saunas, a billiard rooms and outdoor barbecues that can be booked by owners whenever they are entertaining.

“We see the value of providing this type of amenity in major developments,” said Cressy vice-president Hani Lammam.

“In a smaller project the challenge is maintaining such a facility and it becomes too cost prohibitive.”

Lammam said a project would need at least 200 units for it to be worthwhile to build a clubhouse. He added a larger project allows the maintenance costs to be shared by more owners, making it more cost effective.

© The Vancouver Sun 2005

Vancouver Sun reporter Wyng Chow destroyed his own integrity and put the newspaper’s credibility in jeopardy by accepting a benefit from a developer he was covering as a real estate reporter, the Sun’s lawyer said Friday.

In a final argument before arbitrator Rory McDonald, Donald Jordan said Chow, 56, crossed the line when he mixed a personal dispute with Concord Pacific Ltd. with his job as a business reporter. And he said Chow’s acceptance of a “deep discount” on a condominium he bought from the company in 2001 showed a “lack of a moral compass” that justified the newspaper firing him last month.

But Carolyn Askew, who is representing Chow and the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union of Canada, of which he is a member, said in her summation that Chow did nothing wrong in trying to resolve a long-standing complaint he had with Concord Pacific as a legitimate, but unhappy customer of one of their condominium units.

And she accused the newspaper of engaging in a selective attack on Chow, a 32-year employee, instead of addressing the basis of a telephone tip to editor-in-chief Patricia Graham that included an allegation that Chow had received a “sweetheart deal.”

The anonymous tipster complained that the newspaper was overly positive in reporting on real estate matters, and accused it of tailoring coverage to drive advertisers to its Homes section. The tipster named Chow as an example of what was wrong with the newspaper’s business coverage.

Askew said the newspaper’s decision “deflected the criticism of the paper on to Chow” and that no other reporters or the newspaper’s own culpability were investigated. “Patricia Graham totally ignored the substance of the complaint — that the entire Vancouver Sun is pro-development industry,” she said.

But Jordan said such an allegation was preposterous. Chow was the only person named by the tipster, and the paper owed a duty to investigate.

“We allege conduct by him that impinges on his own integrity and the integrity of the Sun in general,” Jordan said. “There is not a single person in the newspaper industry who can say that what Mr. Chow did was right.”

At issue is whether Chow could have been perceived to be in a conflict-of-interest for accepting a $39,000 discount from Concord Pacific on a $308,000, 19th-floor condominium in the Waterford project. At the time, he was writing as the Sun’s real estate reporter and frequently quoted Concord Pacific officials.

Graham fired Chow in December after the paper conducted an investigation and discovered he had paid a below-market price for the condominium. The union is seeking full reinstatement; the company is asking McDonald to uphold Chow’s dismissal.

Chow said the deal was a settlement for his complaint that the floorplan of a townhouse he bought from Concord in 1995 was altered without his authority. There was testimony that in 1997, Concord adjusted the price by about $15,000 to reflect the altered floor plan.

Jordan said this adjustment resolved Chow’s complaint, and that the further discount on the later unit could not be justified. Askew said both Chow and Henry Man, Concord‘s former chief operating officer, felt a price reduction on the Waterford condo was necessary and fair, and that the newspaper couldn’t suggest otherwise.

She also reminded McDonald that the paper has no written code of conduct. In the absence of written policies, which some other print and broadcast media have, the newspaper can’t fairly accuse reporters of not adhering to a strict standard, she said.

And she pointed out that the newspaper wasn’t alleging Chow was biased in his reporting.

But Jordan told McDonald there are three universal concepts of ethics in journalism that every reporter understands: It is wrong to make up things, to claim other peoples’ work as your own, and to accept money or benefits from people you cover.

If Chow had a difficulty with Concord Pacific as a customer, he should have disclosed it, Jordan said. But it wasn’t until after the tip was made that the company learned of the situation.

McDonald reserved judgment and said he would rule within 10 days.