Terry Hui’s Hole in Vancouver’s Heart

When Premier Bill Vander Zalm announced the $320-million sale of the Expo lands on Vancouver’s False Creek to Hong Kong tycoon Li Ka-shing on a rainy day in April 1988, no one noticed 24-year-old Terry Hui in the crowd of cabinet ministers, power brokers, business moguls and real estate speculators jammed into British Columbia’s Enterprise Centre.

They would recognize him soon enough.

Despite his youth, Hui quickly won total control of the massive land development, at 82 hectares the largest in B.C. history, leveraging its profits to create one of the biggest real estate development firms in Canada and likely making himself a billionaire several times over.

In a city that worships real estate, Hui moved effortlessly from the edge of the crowd to the top of the power pyramid — one of Vancouver’s largest landowners, a sought-after philanthropist, a business leader — where he remains to this day.

If there was one person whose decisions could change the face of the city, it was Hui, sole owner and guiding genius of Concord Pacific Place, the real estate project that defined “Vancouverism.”

In the first 15 years under Hui’s leadership, Concord Pacific built a new community of thousands of homes between the Granville Bridge and the Cambie Bridge. Its highrise towers, soaring over a community centre, daycares and waterfront parks, were featured on countless postcards and triggered explosive redevelopment in Yaletown and south Granville.

The land sale also delivered on its promise of transforming the provincial economy, signalling to the Asia-Pacific that foreign investment in this new hub between North America and the East was far-sighted and profitable. Concord Pacific Place validated that claim.

But for all his successes, Hui’s legacy remains in doubt 40 years after Expo 86 welcomed its last visitor. Sometime around 2005, the date that Concord Pacific Place was supposed to be complete, Hui’s attention shifted; the pace of construction on False Creek slowed, and then stalled.

Twenty years later the Expo lands transformation remains unfinished, a huge swath of empty asphalt scarring False Creek’s northeast shore. Concord still owes B.C. a final payment for the land — estimated to be in the hundreds of millions of dollars — for millions of square feet of density it achieved above its 1988 target.

A major waterfront park has never been built. The neighbourhoods nearby, like Chinatown and the Downtown Eastside, are spiralling down, cut off from major investments that sparked the neighbourhood revivals a few blocks west.

Despite Hui’s sudden declaration Jan. 7 that he wishes to proceed with rezoning, provincial Housing Minister Ravi Kahlon has condemned the 20-year delay to complete the final phase as “unacceptable.” Kahlon would like shovels in the ground by Christmas.

No one wants to explain why the land remains empty in 2025, nearly 40 years after Expo 86 shut down.

The stage is set for a final negotiation, between the city and the province on the one hand, and Terry Hui’s Concord Pacific on the other. The rezoning process will clarify how much density Hui achieved since 1988, how much that exceeds expectations and how much revenue will flow to the province as a result.

This unique arrangement, called a “participation mortgage” and forgotten by all but a handful of the original deal-makers, guarantees taxpayers a final, additional payment for all 82 hectares based on how many millions of square feet Concord has built over 13.2 million feet, multiplied by an index of the increase in the value of Vancouver real estate since 1988.

If the project is never finished, Concord never has to pay.

If Kahlon has his way, the negotiation will be quick, Concord will make a final payment of hundreds of millions of dollars for the land, and work will begin before the end of the year.

Concord says Hui’s decision to seek rezoning on his last parcel of those priceless Expo lands was triggered by the density windfall generated by the city’s 2024 decision to eliminate view corridors over the site, as well as the province’s elimination of parking minimums.

If Hui’s vision is approved, the empty land between the Plaza of Nations and Science World, now used mainly for parking by touring rock groups and Cirque du Soleil, will feature a cluster of the city’s tallest towers, including 5,000 homes and a new retail district overlooking a major waterfront park.

But first, Hui must complete some unfinished business.

He needs direction from the city and the province about the location and specifications for new roads and utilities he is required to build, just as he did for earlier phases. This will include removal and replacement of the Georgia and Dunsmuir viaducts, which are not seismically sound and could collapse on the SkyTrain. (Full disclosure: as a Vision Vancouver city councillor between 2008 and 2017, I worked closely with city staff and stakeholders both on the Northeast False Creek Plan and on the decision to remove the viaducts.)

He must make that final payment for the land, some of which the province will use to manage contaminated soil.

Finally, he needs to deliver a spectacular development that exceeds everything he has done so far, a waterfront community of such excellence that the 20-year delay seems worthwhile. The project, when it begins, will be the biggest in Vancouver, dwarfing projects like the multi-towered Oakridge Park.

According to his corporate biography, Hui is someone who “continues to foster community through both development and philanthropy, shaping skylines and society landscapes alike.”

Despite all his other achievements, completing northeast False Creek is the one on which Terry Hui will be judged. Will he deliver on Li Ka-shing’s long-ago promise to the people of B.C. to transform this site in the heart of the city?

As the history of the land deal shows, the purchase has been very lucrative for Terry Hui and Concord. Now it’s time for the previous landowners, the taxpayers of B.C., to see that project completed and to enjoy their share of that wealth.

THE CURTAIN RISES

There was a collective gasp from the 500 VIPs jamming B.C.’s Enterprise Centre on April 27, 1988, when Premier Bill Vander Zalm unveiled Li Ka-shing’s offer to the people of B.C.: in just 15 years, the Hong Kong tycoon vowed to spend $2 billion to transform the abandoned rail yards in Vancouver’s False Creek into a “West Coast Venice” of lagoons and residential towers, a community of 11,000 signalling B.C.’s rising status as a Pacific Rim trading hub. (The lagoons soon disappeared at the insistence of city planners.)

“BREATHTAKING,” shouted the Vancouver Sun’s banner headline, summarizing the project as “$2 billion, 45 towers, 15 years.” Li Ka-shing, the owner of Hong Kong’s Hutchison Whampoa trade group, was “the New Emperor.” Li and his son Victor, 23, who would lead the Concord Pacific Place development, had promised to pay $320 million for 82 hectares on the north shore of Vancouver’s False Creek, with $50 million down and a series of nine further payments between 1995 and 2002 to make up the difference.

If the city was generous in its density approvals over the life of the project, Vander Zalm said, the new owners would pay even more through a “participation mortgage” that the government expected would generate an additional $100 million for taxpayers, or even more.

Critics immediately charged that the province had been robbed in the rushed process that produced the sale.

Vander Zalm’s good friend Peter Toigo, whose rejected bid for the Expo lands and related assets had been closer to $500 million, did not trouble to hide his bitterness. The premier’s hands-on promotion of Toigo’s bid had been so forceful that it triggered an RCMP investigation of conflict-of-interest charges. (Vander Zalm had to break away from the main news conference to deny any wrongdoing.)

Li had fleeced the province, Toigo said, adding that “if he was capable of stealing the property, good luck to him.”

The Far Eastern Economic Review declared that Li had secured the property on “extremely cheap terms” that promised “to be a veritable gold mine for Li and his partners.” In fact, within a year, the site had been assessed at $700 million, more than double the sale price.

Prominent B.C. realtors told the Globe and Mail in 1989 that the sale was “the biggest giveaway in the province’s history,” sneering that Li had acquired the land for less than the price of a suburban warehouse project. Grace McCarthy, the minister responsible for the deal, conceded that B.C. left millions of dollars on the table because of Vander Zalm’s demands for a speedy sale.

Li Ka-shing was quick to offer reassurances.

“Vancouver is a beautiful city,” Li said in a call with reporters from Beijing, where he was negotiating with top Chinese officials about the future takeover of Hong Kong. “I hope people are happy with what we want to do with the land.” The total cost, Li admitted, was a “relatively small amount of money” compared with his other investments.

Victor Li, already a Canadian citizen and Vancouver resident, declared that in just 15 to 20 years, Concord Pacific Place would transform the former rail yards into a symbol of British Columbia’s rising stature as a Pacific Rim trading hub, complete with schools, community centres, daycares, stores, office space and affordable housing.

To ensure that taxpayers received full value, Concord Pacific would make a final payment when the project was complete, a “participation mortgage” to give taxpayers a share of the cash Concord generated from density above 13.2 million square feet of development. For every additional foot above that mark, Concord would pay $12.50 multiplied by an index of the increase in the value of Vancouver real estate since 1988.

Depending on how the payment was calculated, it was expected to add hundreds of millions of dollars to the sale price. Most business leaders closed ranks behind the deal.

A full-page government ad in the Vancouver Sun extolled the virtues of the sale, noting that “the government will continue to receive value from increased property and income taxes, saved interest payments and a participation agreement that ensures we will share in increased value over time.”

“By any measure,” declared Vancouver Sun columnist Vaughn Palmer, “Expo land price is fair.”

Li Ka-shing’s interest in the province had deep roots. He had been visiting the region since the 1960s and even owned a home in Vancouver’s Kerrisdale neighbourhood. It was Victor who urged his father to consider the Expo purchase.

Li, looking for investments offshore as the Chinese takeover of Hong Kong loomed ahead, went right to the top. He declared his interest in buying the Expo lands at a private dinner with then-premier Bill Bennett in the summer of 1986. From that point on, competitors had to struggle to keep up.

By the summer of 1987, cabinet had agreed to sell the land as a single parcel, and in September, the province sought global expressions of interest for a 30-day period. By the end of October, the bids were in. From beginning to end, the sale of the Expo lands would last only eight months.

Li’s decisive move came in the summer of 1987 when he persuaded Stanley Kwok, once one of Hong Kong’s most respected architects and now a longtime B.C. resident and corporate leader, to join his bid team. Kwok, who had spent years on the board of the Crown corporation that owned the Expo lands, had an intimate knowledge of the site’s problems and potential. He also brought vital connections to the business elites of Hong Kong and Vancouver.

Li Ka-shing never looked back.

For the next six months, McCarthy fought a relentless rearguard action against Vander Zalm to preserve the bid process and keep the Toigo offer offside. Their bitter political battle broke into the open with mutual recriminations just days before cabinet confirmed the inevitable: Li Ka-shing’s bid was successful, overpowering a much weaker late entry by a consortium of Vancouver businessmen.

The lawyers got busy writing up the sale document. Shovels would be in the ground by the autumn of 1988. Thanks to Kwok’s impeccable connections, planning of the massive project proceeded at a blistering pace.

The False Creek North Official Development Plan was approved by city council in record time on April 10, 1990, providing for 9,100 residential units, 20 per cent core need housing, commercial space, library space, two schools, a community centre and eight separate pieces of parkland totalling 17 hectares. Views south down existing streets to False Creek were protected, as were mountain views from the south side of the creek.

Public opposition seemed loud on the first night of the public hearing but collapsed on the second. Concord had obtained 90 per cent of its goals, according to observers, distributed across 46 towers.

The company, however, viewed the plan as just the beginning of negotiations, not the end.

The coming years would bring a series of renegotiations, in the form of rezonings, to add units, increase density, shift affordable or social housing off-site, convert the new library to a cash contribution, and much more. Construction workers swarmed across the site, and cranes marched across the horizon. Within four years, residents were moving in.

The Concord team moved quickly to reward its investors and reduce its costs. In January 1990, Li sold the Plaza of Nations site for $40 million to Canadian Metropolitan Properties Corp., an arm of the real estate empire owned by Singapore tycoon Oei Hong Leong. This was not far off the $50-million down payment Concord had made for the entire site in 1988.

Then Concord partner Lee Shau Kee, Hong Kong’s second-wealthiest man, won city approval to develop the easternmost parcel of the site on Pender Street between Chinatown and the old Sun Tower. International Village, as it is called, included 800 homes, the Tinseltown mall and a new T&T Supermarket.

Both developments persuaded Concord watchers that the land had now appreciated to between $800 million and $1 billion, almost triple the 1988 sale price, in just two years.

Construction was well underway in 1992 when Li Ka-shing recalled Victor to Hong Kong to begin his transition to a senior executive of Hutchison Whampoa. Concord Pacific, suddenly leaderless, needed a new chief executive. Terry Hui was ready and available.

TERRY HUI TAKES THE WHEEL

Exactly how Hui took over leadership of Concord Pacific remains uncertain. Had it been Li Ka-shing’s plan from the beginning? Did Hui’s family outflank others among the founding investors to take the prize? Then, as now, the inner workings of Concord Pacific are shrouded in mystery and resemble, in many respects, the business practices of its Hong Kong founders, who collaborate based on long-term personal relationships. (Concord Pacific did not grant multiple requests for an interview with Terry Hui.)

Like Victor Li, his friend and business partner, Hui was a Canadian citizen born in 1964, who had just completed degrees in electrical engineering and physics at Berkeley. Son of the owner of one of Hong Kong’s largest construction firms, also a Concord investor, Hui spent his first postgraduate years taking any job available at his father’s Vancouver developments, earning a ground-level education in the construction industry.

In the meantime, Victor Li and Hui joined forces to invest in Vancouver real estate, bursting on the scene with a rapid-fire series of projects under the banner of Grand Adex, their own B.C. development firm. Regatta, a low-rise project on False Creek at the southwest end of the Cambie Bridge, unleashed a storm of controversy when all its pre-sale units were offered for sale exclusively in Hong Kong. Hui garnered one of his first news clippings with his promise to ensure that units were offered first in B.C. for at least 24 hours.

As Victor Li packed up and headed to Hong Kong, Hui was promoted to Concord’s chief executive officer, with the trusty Kwok remaining as senior vice-president. Hui was just 29. The Lis sold their controlling interest to the Hui family, until then a minority partner.

“His first billion he was born to,” laughed one Vancouver realtor. “But the second billion he earned the hard way.”

In 1996, Hui completed a complex set of financial manoeuvres to merge his family’s Burcon Group, one of Canada’s largest development firms, with Concord. Burcon purchased Concord Pacific for $250 million at a time when Concord had paid only $70 million of the $320 million it owed B.C. for the Expo lands.

By 1998, Concord was ready to begin construction on Marinaside, a three-tower complex at the foot of Davie that would add 362 condos to the tally. The deadline for final completion of the redevelopment of the lands was now expected “within the next 10 years, or about 2008.”

Despite Concord’s widening investments, from Seattle to London and across Canada, Hui maintained close ties with the Expo lands, establishing his primary residence on False Creek as soon as it was possible to do so. Although he seldom granted interviews, he was a fixture on the city’s philanthropic circuit, chairing fundraising campaigns and contributing to his own favourites like the Dragon Boat Festival.

Reporters remarked on his eye for detail and his business-first attitude. In a 1994 interview, he glanced up at Governor’s Tower, the 30-storey anchor development at Drake and Hamilton streets, and declared the building “too dark.” The entire tower would be repainted, he declared.

“We have to do the best,” he said, adding “it makes business sense, too.” In a nod to the Chinese buyers who made up half his clientele, Hui paid close attention to feng shui and ensured every phone number included the lucky number 8.

In 1996, still confident the entire project would be done “in 10 years,” Hui explained his approach to development to a reporter. “Business, in a way, is like art,” he said. “I have a certain way I want you to feel... I have the vision. There are restrictions in the medium, like the building materials. I have to make money on the whole thing. But the execution is an art.”

Hui always worried about the money, but the money seemed to come easily. In 1997, Concord acquired the land for CityPlace, a 7,500-home project on 18 hectares at the foot of the CN Tower in Toronto. The entire project, although smaller than Concord Pacific Place, was substantially complete by 2018 with the construction of the two tallest towers in the project, one 59 storeys and the other 69.

In Vancouver, however, progress slowed to a crawl. A handful of towers rose at the north end of the Cambie Bridge, and a Costco and three towers were wedged between the Seaforth Armoury and BC Place in 2007, but Concord Pacific seemed to be building everywhere in the Lower Mainland except False Creek.

THE LONG STALL

It was a sign of Hui’s persistent personal power that a BC Business reporter doing a rare profile in 2010 was unable to find anyone ready to say an unkind word. Words like “smart,” “creative,” “thoughtful” and “generous” set the tone, with more fulsome evaluations adding “invaluable, so competent,” and “really creative, highly artistic, thoroughly technical and intensely analytical.”

Hui arrived for the interview with his face heavily bandaged, the result of a longboarding fall. His main concern, however, was his dwindling supply of buildable land on False Creek, where “of the original 82 hectares, only about 10 remain undeveloped, enough space for maybe 12 more towers.”

Despite the successes of Concord Pacific Place, then housing 20,000 people, the BC Business writer warned “there are many others who will evaluate Concord Pacific Place on the eve of its completion. After all, it’s a mecca for planners the world over, and many consider it the most influential North American development of the past quarter century.”

He had no idea, of course, that completion was at least 15 years away. For more than a decade, Concord’s goal had been construction. After 2005, the company’s main activity in False Creek seemed to be litigation.

Within a few years of assuming control of Concord, Hui found himself in a bitter dispute that poisoned his relationship with Li Ka-shing and Victor Li, the old friends who had facilitated his rise to the leadership of the entire company. The source of the conflict was six sites set aside for affordable housing that sat empty for decades while Concord, the Lis and the city battled over their fate.

In 2010, according to a 2018 report by Vancouver Sun reporters Joanne Lee-Young and Lori Culbert, Hui went head-to-head against the Lis, who owned the six lots in 1994 when federal support for affordable housing ended. (Given Concord’s closely held corporate structure, it is often difficult to sort out which partner owned given parcels at a particular time.)

In 1999, when the Lis sold their remaining stock in Concord to the Hui family, they were paid $22.8 million for the non-market lots but retained a right of first refusal if the lots changed hands.

The Lis had wanted $25 million, court filings disclosed, but their lawyer said they agreed to the lower amount demanded by Hui “based solely on your long-standing friendship.” The lengthy and bitter fight that followed seems to have had its start in this $2.2 million difference between two ultra-rich and long-associated families.

As provincial and federal government funding completely dried up in 2001, Concord began offering the city three of the empty lots in return for the right to do market condominiums on the remainder, a deal the city estimated would generate tens of millions of dollars of profit for Concord while undercutting housing affordability.

Although that deal never proceeded, the issue arose again in 2010 when the Lis exercised what they considered their right of first refusal to buy back the six sites, a transaction Hui alleged would have “hindered, damaged and delayed” the relationship between the city and Concord.

The battle continued for several years, with both Hui and the Lis claiming to be owners of the six sites. According to court documents, Victor Li travelled to Vancouver in 2011 to meet then-mayor Gregor Robertson, hoping to convert all six sites to market housing for a before-tax profit of $132 million.

In a confidential settlement two years later, Hui emerged as owner of the six sites. Five years later, however, Concord was back in court suing the city to halt redevelopment of a small affordable housing site into a mixed-market and non-market project.

Concord’s position was simple: only it could develop land for market condos on Expo lands, even if the land in question included affordable housing as part of a larger project.

The six-site saga finally ended in 2023 when the city effectively transferred three of the sites back to Concord for market condo development at a price of $121 million. The city received more than the 600 units originally planned, but on half of the sites. The other three sites became Concord market condo sites. As Robert Renger later reported in The Tyee, the city agreed to spend $110 million of the total on road improvements in the area.

By the time the issue was finally settled, affordable housing across the Expo lands was about half of the 20 per cent of all housing promised in the 1990 official development plan.

BATTLE FOR PLAZA OF NATIONS

The six sites were merely a sideshow, however, to Hui’s seven-year effort to recover Concord’s interest in the Plaza of Nations site, which Concord had sold to Singapore tycoon Oei Hong Leong for $40 million in 1989. According to court documents, Terry Hui suffered from seller’s remorse, seeking to reverse the sale almost as soon as he gained control of Concord.

For the next 25 years, he engaged in discussions with Oei about buying the land back, before finally launching legal action in 2015 to bring the matter to a head.

By this time, both parties agreed that the Plaza of Nations site was worth $500 million, a far cry from the $40-million 1989 sale price. Oei staunchly denied making any agreement to sell the land, but a key element of the dispute turned on Concord’s effort to persuade Oei to pay part of the “land value tax,” the participation mortgage negotiated in the original sale to Concord in 1988. Oei insisted, naturally, that he had bought Concord’s asset, not its liabilities.

As the punishing litigation unfolded, B.C. Supreme Court Justice Peter Voith received 300 pages of written submissions that warring lawyers took five days to summarize. Hui took the stand himself, as did David Ju, a Concord vice-president.

Concord’s campaign came to a hard stop in 2022 when the Supreme Court of Canada refused to hear Concord’s final appeal and handed a complete victory to Oei, who by then valued the land at $800 million. Concord, ordered to pay $5 million in special costs, had already suffered a harsh reputational blow in 2021 when Justice Voith condemned Ju for “egregiously dishonest” testimony.

Just two years later, Oei rubbed salt in the wounds by flipping the property, already fully rezoned, to a little-known development firm called Northchild for a profit rumoured to be hundreds of millions of dollars. Northchild immediately announced it would seek a new rezoning to capture the windfall value generated by removal of the view cones.

Not satisfied with suing the other big players on the Expo lands, Concord conducted protracted legal battles with neighbours and even Hui’s strata council.

For years before and after the 2010 Winter Olympic Games, Concord fought with residents of nearby False Creek towers over the use of the undeveloped land. Members of the False Creek Residents Association complained about piles of construction materials, including portable toilets, old trailers and building materials stored on the doorstep of BC Place and Rogers Arena.

Although the same area was urgently required by the 2010 Winter Olympic Games to stage opening and closing ceremonies at BC Place stadium, the organizing committee did not get a rental agreement from Concord to access the site until December 2009, just two months before the Olympic flame arrived.

In 2014, Hui was again battling residents over their demand that Concord’s perpetual sales centre on the north shore of False Creek be removed to permit construction of the long-awaited waterfront park. Concord scored a rare victory in that fight.

Hui’s biggest loss, perhaps, was the most personal and closest to home. Since 2010, when his personal residence became the newly completed penthouse of a Concord tower designed by Arthur Erickson, Hui had expected to run a private elevator from the underground parking to the second floor, which he wanted for personal use, and then on to his $19-million home.

In 2021, the City of Vancouver agreed that the second-floor space Hui claimed as his amenity area was contrary to the building permit and should be available to all residents. Justice Lauren Blake rejected Hui’s subsequent legal effort to have his neighbours put in their place. Once again, Hui’s opponents were awarded costs.

THE FINAL PUSH

Vancouverites have become so habituated to the existence of a 10-hectare parking lot in the heart of the city that it goes unnoticed, apart from periodic disruptions for Cirque du Soleil or the creation of a new Deadpool sequel. But ask them how such valuable land can remain empty amidst a housing crisis, and indifference quickly turns to outrage.

Although few of the 5,000 homes promised by Hui’s latest proposal will be affordable, they would mark a multibillion-dollar addition to the city’s housing supply and constitute the largest single development in the city. Additional property taxes and business revenues would flow to city coffers and the participation mortgage could be large enough to cover contaminated soil costs with revenue to spare.

City officials would at last have an explanation for how such precious land could remain empty 40 years after its sale and 20 years after it was to be complete.

The future of northeast False Creek lies largely in Terry Hui’s hands. That’s the way he wants it. Despite his failure to complete the project, the site remains both his home and his obsession.

Hui has controlled Concord Pacific since 1992 and has owned it outright for 30 years. Thanks to the project, he became a fixture on the city’s philanthropic circuit, chairing fundraising campaigns and sponsoring galas, often holding a top-tier spot in Vancouver Magazine’s annual “Power 50” rankings. During the annual Dragon Boat Festival, he may be seen on his motor yacht anchored off the Olympic Village, enjoying the races and entertaining friends.

As chief executive officer, he moved Concord onto the national and then international real estate markets, all the while growing an equally powerful tech and green-energy side to the company. He almost certainly became a billionaire, perhaps two or three times over.

Yet three decades later, he has not only not finished the project, but also not finished paying for the land.

It’s not as if Hui has lost interest in the creek or in Vancouver. Recent acquisitions show Concord flush with cash and keen to do more development. In 2016, he bought the Molson brewery site on Burrard Street for $185 million, vowing to build a mixed-use residential neighbour with a “knowledge-based work centre.”

In 2017, Concord paid $290 million for the Westin Bayshore on Coal Harbour. In 2021, he landed the old St. Paul’s Hospital site on Burrard, paying $850 million for a 2.7-hectare site. The deletion of view cones will give Concord a big lift on this site as well.

But never, until Jan. 7, had Terry Hui expressed such serious interest in finishing what got him started — the Expo lands.

A series of complex negotiations will be necessary to bring B.C.’s largest-ever land sale to a close. City land between the viaducts must be transferred to Concord. The location and cost of streets, utilities and public spaces must be decided and planned. The rezoning must proceed, and the outcome integrated into calculation of the participation mortgage, so the land purchase can finally be completed.

None of it will be easy, but the alternative is more years of lost opportunity for all three parties.

Housing Minister Ravi Kahlon has made his determination clear. Kahlon confirmed Feb. 27 that the three parties had agreed to a joint negotiating process. City staff are reported to be assembling a task force to focus on the project.

Concord Pacific has promised to proceed with rezoning. After 20 years of delay, the prospect of construction, bringing 5,000 new units into the city when they are desperately needed, has never been more real. (Concord estimates it has built 11,000 homes so far at Concord Pacific Place, well above the 9,100 expected in 1988.)

Which Terry Hui will come to the table? The problem-solving, hard-driving young entrepreneur who put Concord Pacific Place on the map? Or the litigious developer who battled neighbours in court in the 10 years after that?

Although a very private man, Hui has said enough about his personal life to show he is thinking now on a bigger scale than he did in his 30s. The devoted supporter of the Dragon Boat Festival can be found each spring at the helm of his maxi-yacht Lyra in the waters off Capri and Saint-Tropez, where he has won seven sailing championships.

Closer to home, he is a co-founder of the Quantum Gravity Society, a Vancouver-based institute focused on supporting international research to reconcile the theories of relativity and quantum mechanics. (Also on the board with Hui are Electronic Arts founder Paul Lee and Frank Giustra, owner of Lions Gate Entertainment.)

Compared with the challenges of relativity and quantum mechanics, landing an agreement to complete Concord Pacific Place seems easy.