Rick Ilich, Founder & CEO of Townline: A Base-Hit Builder Still Showing the Way

Listening to Rick Ilich in this edition of the Goodman Report podcast (and you really must), you immediately understand why his most influential peers have twice elected him chair of the Urban Development Institute.

Ilich embodies the long, deep, always-in-the-weeds experience of a builder who started his massively successful development company in 1980 and has steered it sagely and safely through even the most recent and most devastating downturn.

He speaks with grounded political and policy passion, quietly raging at municipal governments’ “addiction to the ATM machine of new housing” and condemning the higher-level government intervention and bungling that produced the latest “100-percent-policy-based” economic crisis. (In one of the few theatrical flourishes in our conversation, Ilich refused even to name the former federal Liberal prime minister and said of current B.C. Premier David Eby: “Does he understand economics? No, not even close. Is he an advocate of social engineering and over-regulation? Absolutely.”)

What comes through most insistently, though, is Ilich’s rare combination of prudence and innovation. The son of a civil engineer who began his own career laying pipe in the ground, Ilich cut his real estate teeth as a Block Brothers “gopher” before starting Townline as a single-family housing developer. He has stayed on the front line of every major housing trend—townhouses, condo towers, mixed-use commercial/residential projects—and made a substantial, early contribution to purpose-built rental and not-for-profit housing. Through TL Housing Solutions, he has now delivered more than 4,000 non-market homes for women escaping violence, seniors, people with special needs, Indigenous communities, and working families priced out of the market.

Lately the challenge has been to support and rescue other industry players struggling in this compromised market and—like all the big brands—to keep teams together and cranes turning, even if that means building “for no margin just to keep things going.”

Townline is still innovating. You’ll want to hear what Ilich has to say about the first-in-Canada purpose-built co-housing development he has completed in Victoria. And despite ruing the end of a decades-long hot market, he remains optimistic about the industry’s capacity to build and thrive. “You’ve got to count on good value and good product,” he says. “And despite the pain that’s being inflicted right now, there’s nothing really that wrong with that.”

For Townline, that means: “We’ll keep trucking away. We’ll do our thing, and we’ll do fine. But everything is, at best, a base hit or a bunt.”

For everyone else, it will pay to listen to Ilich’s soft-spoken wisdom.

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