Last Night at NAIOP
The Northern Virginia commercial real estate community gets one night a year to celebrate its creativity in design and killer deal strategy at NAIOP's annual "Best Of" awards. Of course we were at the big event at the Ritz-Carlton in Tysons with our camera.
The firm of the year went to the Peterson Cos, started by Milt Peterson (middle) in 1965. He’s bookended by his business partners and sons, Jon and Rick. Few other development firms have had the impact that Peterson has had in Northern Virginia, from building large, sought-after neighborhoods like Burke Centre to creating an urban identity in Loudoun County.
Washington REIT picked up two awards for its Silverline Center in Tysons. The project was recognized for "Best Building Common Area" and "Best Building Repositioning/Capital Improvement."
HITT Contracting also came away with some trophies, including best interiors in the 15k to 49,999 SF category for Microsoft Parature's sixth-floor office and best building R&D/industrial/flex for a confidential project in Loudoun County. HITT was also on the winning teams for best interiors over 50k SF for its work on Intelsat's HQ in Tysons and best interiors in the 15k SF to 49,999 SF category for its work on DLT Solutions in Fairfax County. Other winners included the trendsetter award to Vornado/Charles E. Smith; best lease transaction to Lerner Enterprises for 1775 Tysons Blvd, and to Trammell Crow for K2M Group's global HQ. The best real estate sale went to Transwestern for Stafford Place I & II in Ballston. To see the rest of the Best of NAIOP Northern Virginia winners, click here.
Judging from the festive mood among the over 725 attendees last night, the NoVa market is thriving and poised for bigger growth in 2016. (Our camera lens could only capture this sliver of the sea of tables.) We've heard predictions that jobs will be added each year for the next five, with professional business service firms leading the pack.
WestDulles Properties president Mark Hassinger once again did an excellent job emceeing the event, along with Baker Tilly managing director Barbara McDuffie.
Spotted in the crowd were JBG's Jack Kelly, Corbelis Management's Brian Cullen and MRP's Bob Murphy. (Anyone know any good "Three Irishmen walk into a bar..." jokes?) MRP's Tysons Overlook won the best speculative office building award.
Also snapped were DesignTech Engineering's Matt Bowers, Dize Group's Kim Dize, L.F. Jennings' Jack Black, Office Movers' Jim Durfee and L.F. Jennings' Sam Hunter.
Working the crowd: Christopher Consultants' Marie Purkert and Baker Tilly's Colleen Wevodau and Courtney Davison.
And we spotted this team from ECS: Nicole Smith, Michael Sladki and Steve Adamczyk.
