I am receiving \"The remote server returned an error: (403) Forbidden\" error message on the block of code below. Specifically this line is failing: var response =
Try checking on both production and dev iis the authentication methods for the application (iis manager -> click on the website->features view ->authentication).
Sounds like on the dev iis you have anonymous authentication enabled, and on production iis not. If you will not have anonymous auth enabled on production, you will probably need to set the request.Credentials as you can see above.