Though they generated loud protests with a series of assaults on provincial social programs, the B.C. Liberals under Premier Gordon Campbell have done a good job of endearing themselves to the Vancouver business elite.

And one of Campbell’s most enthusiastic boosters is Graeme Stamp, who took over last month as front man for the Vancouver Board of Trade (VBoT).

Unlike your run-of-the-mill chamber of commerce figurehead, Stamp is no glad-handing lightweight. As executive vice-president of Fairmont Developments Ltd., currently redeveloping and marketing the company’s significant land holdings on the Vancouver waterfront, he’s a front-line heavy hitter. Until its recent rebranding, Fairmont was known as Marathon Developments, an offshoot of Marathon Realty – once the real-estate arm of the mighty Canadian Pacific empire.

Stamp is in charge of Fairmont Developments operations in both Vancouver and Toronto. He has the ear of the B.C. premier and everyone else who wields clout within the Lower Mainland’s corporate aristocracy.

Graeme Stamp

In spite of occasional irritants such as the on-again, off-again Richmond-Airport-Vancouver (RAV) rapid transit project (see story Page 18), the new VBoT boss loves to talk about how much simpler it is to get things done since the banishment of the provincial New Democrats.

“Part of the new business climate comes from the change in government,” Stamp cited reasons for his current good mood. “(The Liberals) came in with a great sense of enthusiasm and Gordon reduced taxes. There’s a sense of renewed optimism, part of which comes from winning the right to play host to the 2010 Olympic Winter Games,” he added.

When Campbell assigned a cabinet member to take a pair of shears to the province’s overabundance of regulatory red tape, Stamp murmured a silent prayer of thanks.

And when the province stepped up to take over RAV while providing a guarantee against potential cost overruns, he led the corporate chorus of cheers.

Repeatedly stalled because of cost concerns expressed by members of TransLink, a.k.a. the Greater Vancouver Regional Transportation Authority, the RAV proposal was headed for a third vote as this edition of the Edge went to press.

“Speaking for the Vancouver Board of Trade, we can’t have political gridlock giving us transportation gridlock,” muttered an impatient Stamp, clearly frustrated by the TransLink naysayers. “We have a strangled road system right now.”

Of course, Stamp’s an old hand at doing business with the province. On behalf of Fairmont-Marathon two years ago, he engineered the $27.5-million sale of a waterfront site designated for the expanded convention centre, targeted for completion two years before the Winter Games.

“As I look out my window, I do not see a shovel in the ground,” he said. “But there are no hiccups – the funding’s in place, the staff and consultants are in place, and final design approvals are going through the city right now.”

Perhaps symptomatic of how difficult it was to do business in pre-Lib Vancouver, plans for the convention centre were only hammered out after a decade of wrangling.

“This has been a tough one to get going,” Stamp conceded. “This went back and forth under the NDP government, but it was our site that ultimately came into play.”

And though the convention centre proposal predated the Olympic bid, Stamp says “a synergy started to happen” between the new centre and the Games following the IOC’s acceptance of Vancouver’s bid. In that context, he sees the convention centre go-ahead as an important catalyst for renewed business confidence in the Lower Mainland.

A UBC grad who majored in urban geography and did post-grad work in urban land economics, Stamp enjoys reminiscing about his humble beginnings. He worked his way through school as a garbage collector (“that’s sanitary engineer,” he joked) and served one summer as fourth cook in a CPR dining car on the Vancouver-Winnipeg run.

The son of a CP Airlines employee, Stamp joined Marathon Developments about 15 years ago, some years after the current premier’s tenure as a Marathon Realty project manager. (“Before my time,” said Stamp.)

During a one-on-one conversation, the new board of trade chief tends to echo the upbeat economic message he hammered home during his inaugural speech, delivered (fittingly enough) in the Fairmont Waterfront Hotel.

“We’ve been through SARS, forest fires, drought, the mad-cow crisis, the softwood lumber dispute with the U.S. But notwithstanding that, B.C. matched Alberta’s economic growth last year and we’re looking at 3.5-per-cent growth this year,” said the one-time Marathon Man.

“The sense of optimism is terrific. I think that’s so important.”

(Tom Keyser can be reached at tomk@businessedge.ca)