Vancouver developer Anthem Properties has dealt with its share of setbacks for one of its latest projects

difficult to build a 66-storey building with almost 600 apartments—some of them for-sale condos, some of them rentals, some of them subsidized rentals—plus a few floors of office space, an indoor lounge, an outdoor area with a barbecue, a gym, a ground floor filled with interesting restaurants and shops, storage for about 1,500 bikes, underground car parking and a children’s play area. Should it? Should it?

Of course it’s complicated— it takes a team with a couple dozen specialists to make that mini-world function well, to find and coordinate the hundreds of building details, from ordering glass to figuring out how many EV plug-ins to install to running the projected costs and revenues for decades ahead. That means building in a cushion for unpredictable bumps: the way the price of steel skyrocketed after Russia invaded Ukraine, for example.

Those are all twists and hurdles that the team at Anthem Properties—one of B.C.’S top 10 private developers—is used to. Eric Carlson’s company has 96 projects on the go in B.C., Alberta and California. It has 4,300 apartments and townhouses under development in Coquitlam alone. Definitely not a rookie.

But, as the firm’s experience with just one of those developments has shown, all of that intense planning can hit a chassis-bending road bump in a minute.

The story of Anthem’s Citizen complex in Burnaby— where pre-sales are just starting—is not a case study of the worst development muck-up ever. But its evolution has been an unforgettable rollercoaster for Melissa Howey, vice-president of development at the company, who has been steering it through since 2019. It tells a story about the current state of the art and science of development, one that the Anthem team offered to share with me when I asked to get taken through the process of building a single project.

When the planning for Citizen started, the projected cost was $480 million for two 33-storey towers on a large site on Kingsway a block from Metrotown, near Anthem’s successful Station Square development. The carrying costs were estimated at $150,000 to $300,000 a month, and that was included in the building pro forma for what everyone