Sitting at a back corner of her Tableau restaurant, Lilliana De Cotiis feels at home, more at ease amid the clatter of plates and sultry jazz than in a traditional office setting.
The scion of one of Vancouver's most ambitious and successful real estate development families sketches out growth plans for the five-year-old Loden Hotel brand that she owns with four siblings.
"Absolutely we're expanding," De Cotiis revealed with her trademark exuberance that has led some to describe her as the Energizer bunny of the family.
"I'm hoping, fingers crossed, that in the next year or two we will have another Loden open. Our vision is to expand the Loden brand across Canada – Toronto and then maybe Calgary and Montreal."
De Cotiis runs the hospitality division of real estate developer Amacon, which she co-owns with eldest sibling Teresa and older brothers Donato, Luca and Marcello.
Siblings have input on all aspects of Amacon's corporate operations, but De Cotiis is the driving force behind the Loden Hotel, Tableau restaurant and the recently renovated Homer St. Café. Marcello, as president, is widely considered to be the family leader, whereas Donato deals more with construction. Teresa has helped with leasing but is now more focused on philanthropy, while Luca fills other voids.
"We're not really into titles," De Cotiis said. "It depends on the task at hand – any of us could take the lead."
Family is important to 40-year-old De Cotiis, who is single, divorced and, though childless, still harbours aspirations to be a mother.
Though she and her siblings get along well, her family has been fraught with squabbles and lawsuits, but that has been confined, primarily, to her father's generation and her cousins.
De Cotiis and her siblings named their company Amacon, after late father Amalio and mother Concetta. Amalio was part of the first generation of De Cotiises to arrive in Vancouver. He came with parents Donato and Teresa and three sisters as well as brothers Marcangelo, Inno, Vito and Michael in a staggered migration.
Together the brothers named their development company Viam, which was an acronym made up of the first letters of the brothers' names.
Eldest brother Marcangelo eventually had a falling out with his brothers that was serious enough to devolve into legal action.
Vito died in his 30s. Inno created his own real estate development company and named it by spelling his own name backwards: Onni. Youngest brother Michael then founded and still runs Pinnacle International.
"We're some of our best competitors at times, but we can still split bread at a Sunday night dinner," De Cotiis said of her many relatives. "Sometimes I wish my brothers and sister weren't my partners, but, when you look at it, there's a positive in that we inherently know each other, and there's this innate understanding between us. It's just there."
Her ability to get along with relatives in a family that has had its share of feuds might be a testament to her affable personality and courteous nature, said Anson Realty owner Grace Kwok, who has sold real estate for both Amacon and Pinnacle through the years.
"She interacts well with people of different generations," said Kwok, who is older than De Cotiis but younger than her father.
McCarthy Tetrault LLP partner Lisa Vogt agreed.
Vogt was a practising lawyer when she first met De Cotiis in the mid-1980s. De Cotiis was finishing elementary school, and Amalio wanted his daughter to have the positive influence of meeting a woman who was practising law.
"He was thinking, 'Boy, there could be a lawyer in the family. Maybe something will rub off on Lilliana,'" said Vogt, who did legal work for Amalio. "He had big ambitions for his children, and he was proud to have them follow in his footsteps, yet he also wanted them to get an education."
De Cotiis, who refers to Vogt as her mentor, did a BA in history at Simon Fraser University and then took a year off to figure out what she wanted to do.
When friends struggled to find employment, De Cotiis started to realize that entering the family business might be her best option.
She joined siblings at the newly formed Amacon to do marketing and administration on projects such as the oval-shaped 501 Pacific residential tower, where a buzz was created by having a radio station give away a condominium.
Several years later, after the turn of the millennium, she moved to Toronto to establish Amacon's beachhead in Canada's largest metropolis.
De Cotiis worked alongside Amalio to negotiate Amacon's purchase of 30 acres in downtown Mississauga – now Parkside Village, the company's most ambitious project.
Two of Parkside Village's proposed 15 towers are completed. One is under construction and two other parcels – a townhome complex and a mid-rise tower – are in pre-sales.
"You reach a point in your career and life when lifestyle becomes important and different opportunities come into play," De Cotiis said.
"So my decision was to oversee hospitality and come back to Vancouver."
Her 77-room Loden Hotel and its Tableau restaurant had been built when she was away and were part of a project that included the Melville residential tower at the corner of Melville and Bute streets.
Five framed Star Diamond awards hang in the hotel lobby – all won by either the Loden or Tableau since 2010 and all proof that De Cotiis has made a success of the family's profitable boutique hotel.
TripAdvisor Inc. ranks her hotel No. 3 in Vancouver with a 97% approval rating from guests.
"Occupancy is about 75% to 85% right now, and we have a variety of travellers who stay with us," she said. "About 60% are business travellers."
De Cotiis busies herself with charitable endeavours when not at the Loden. Though not on the board, she is an active fundraiser for the Dr. Peter AIDS Foundation and Canadian Cancer Society.
She also helps Teresa with philanthropy and was active with the Amacon-sponsored 20-foot-tall Christmas tree recently on display at Jack Poole Plaza.
