More than two years after finding out their building wasn’t built to code, dozens of condo owners in Surrey, B.C., are suing the developer and contractors behind the project.

Homeowners with units in the building filed a lengthy lawsuit this year against the developer, contractor, construction manager, architect and engineers — just about everyone who had a hand in the tower’s creation — claiming their homes have lost value.

“The construction deficiencies and dangerous defects have resulted in continuous property damage and loss to the [strata],” the claim said.

The lawsuit is the latest development in more than seven years of investigations and disputes over the tower — which, according to the lawsuit, was supposed to be a “state-of-the-art” home for hundreds of families when it was completed in 2013. 

The Ultra, a modern concrete-and-glass building, stands on a dead-end street just a few minutes’ walk from Surrey City Hall. There are more than 360 units in the building, with a penthouse listed for as much as $1.6 million.

Problems with the tower were made public in 2019 after two engineers involved with the building were suspended.

The first, John Bryson, resigned and agreed to never work again as an engineer in B.C. after an investigation found his structural designs for the building did not meet B.C. building code, specifically when it came to the building’s capacity to handle high winds and major seismic events like an earthquake. 

A consent order detailing the case said Bryson used the wrong national building code instead of the code B.C. had in place to design certain parts of the building. Certain mandatory calculations weren’t done at all, investigators said.

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