Last Night at the TOBY Awards
Last night, the Apartment and Office Building Association of Metro DC handed out its 30th annual TOBY awards for outstanding buildings. In the ballroom of the Fairmont Hotel hundreds of the folks who run some of DC's most prominent office buildings were honored for their day-to-day work. These are not the dealmakers, AOBA EVP Peggy Jeffers told us over dinner. The honorees are the people that make the office buildings run in this city, and this was their night.
Taking home the only contested building award of the night was Akridge for 700 Sixth St NW, winning the 250,000-499,000 SF Building of the Year award. The 12-story, 300k SF building is owned by USAA and was built in 2009. The rooftop garden was called an "outright oasis" by judges, and the Akridge team hooted and hollered when their name was called.
The staff of Waterfront Station I, a Vornado/Charles E. Smith development, received the award for Best Corporate Facility. The building on 4th Street SW is owned by USAA and 100% occupied by the DC government. The team organizes grocery donations to local residents, kickball tournaments and provides landscaping for local churches.
The Millennium Building by The Tower Cos took home the Earth Building prize, recognized for solar panels and rainwater collection barrels on its roof, a composting program, and an energy monitoring screen on the roof. The 240k SF building was renovated in 1999 and sits at the corner of 19th and K streets NW.
In the medical office building category, Carr Properties took home the hardware, er, glassware, for The Barlow Building on Wisconsin Avenue in Chevy Chase, MD. The building encounters 2,500 visitors per day, and some overnight sleep study patients and the team pictured above "handles it all beautifully," the judges said. The 272k SF facility, with a ground-floor Starbucks, has had several building upgrades since it opened, particularly challenging considering its tenants.
Vornado/Charles E. Smith's Bob Pimentel was thrilled to receive a TOBY for Chief/Lead Engineer.
And Rene Munoz was overwhelmed after being named the winner of the Operating Engineer award. Rene said when he was asked to run maintenance for Watergate 600, "I said, 'OK, let's do this.'" We snapped him with Boston Properties regional engineer Bill Atkinson, who gave him the glass TOBY.
BOMA International president Henry Chamberlain, TOBY Committee chair Kathy Knizer of Duke Realty, J Street Realty's Paul Davis and AOBA president Sean Warfield, snapped after everyone was feted and fed with lobster and steak, were thrilled with how the night went. Congrats to all the winners!
