Luke Brocki

If “world-class city” claims are to be believed, Vancouver is a household word around the globe. Nevertheless, attempts to rebrand some of the city’s neighbourhoods suggest an inferiority complex with a whiff of New York envy. Take the Solo District, for example, a condo development rising on the banks of the...

Hunting for the perfect getup for your avatar to wear while you peruse the menu on your video gaming console can be a frustrating first world problem, but a Vancouver-based company is here to help—and make a good living in the curious business of personalizing virtual spaces. Disruptive Publishers can get...

Its own port history offers valuable business advice for New Westminster, whose planners struggle to keep its waterfront diverse under an onslaught of condominium developments, according to a SFU professor on a four-year research project meant to help the Queen City return to its former splendor. SFU geographer Peter Hall is...

Financial planners say young professionals looking to build wealth should pause before locking up all their spare cash in a registered retirement savings plan (RRSP) and consider alternatives such as parking higher-risk investments inside a tax-free savings account (TFSA), or–if they’re in the real estate market–making mortgage overpayments. As the March...

Local food is at the heart of all five companies chosen to receive funding and support from a business accelerator at the University of British Columbia. This is the second year the Coast Capital Savings Innovation Hub at UBC’s Sauder School of Business has gifted cash, mentorship, rent-free office space and...

A new startup is looking to cash in on busy white-collar types too busy to fix themselves their first meal of the day before rushing to the office. “On the weekends, the hangover crowd is someone we’re not shutting out either,” says Ripan Gill, co-founder and operations manager of The Breakfast...

A new accelerator program in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside is helping small businesses secure interest-free loans and access mentors such as investor Joel Solomon, a close friend of Mayor Gregor Robertson. Dubbed the V Prize, it’s an initiative led by Building Opportunities with Business (BOB), a non-profit mothballed in 2011 after a...

Burnaby-based fuel cell maker Ballard Power Systems Inc. has a new plan. Fueled by $3.39-million in federal funding from Automotive Partnership Canada (APC), the company has linked up with Simon Fraser University on a quest to make fuel-cell-powered buses competitive with diesel hybrids by 2015. Years of empty promises of profit...

Imagine your thermostat automatically dropping your bedroom temperature when you kill your bedside lamp for the night. Or your phone getting a text if the dryer doesn’t get turned on soon after the washing machine shuts off. It sounds like an episode of The Jetsons, but—following a successful Kickstarter campaign—local...

Hiring people with barriers to employment is a smart financial play, according to a new Ernst & Young analysis of the hiring practices of Atira Property Management Inc., which manages thousands of housing units across the Lower Mainland and employs individuals with addictions and mental health issues as front desk...

It’s the kind of soppy late September Saturday in Vancouver that confirms another summer had died, but I don’t dodge puddles on my way to see a family doctor. I sit in no waiting rooms and flip through zero magazines rife with microbes of endless coughs and sneezes. I’m at...

Planners and decision-makers seeking to replace partisan screaming matches over city cycling with data-driven conversations should embrace economic assessment tools, an SFU epidemiologist told the second Metro Vancouver Cycling Action Forum, a half-day event held Wednesday afternoon at TransLink’s new headquarters near Sapperton SkyTrain Station in New Westminster. The forum heard that...