CEE Real Estate Quality Awards for 2005 Winners (CEE)

Mr Sándor Demján, founder and Chairman of TriGranit Development Corporation

Over 350 of the Central & Eastern European real estate industrys top brass gathered at the InterContinental Warsaw Hotel Tuesday night to celebrate an outstanding year of achievement in 2005 and applaud the winners of 18 awards, including a CEE Lifetime Achievement Awards for Mr Sándor Demján, founder and Chairman of TriGranit Development Corporation and one of Hungarys most influential businessmen.

In front of a packed house, Mr Demján spoke of the responsibility of the industry in a maturing market to focus more on quality and sustainability rather than volume and price. He said: We are at a cross-roads for the industry in this region, where until now there has been a rush to feed the short term demand for space, but we now need to think more about making buildings that will still have a positive impact on their communities and surroundings in 20-30 years time.

Mr Demján also drew applause for the announcement of a staggering donation of 150,000 Euro to the recent Katowice conference centre disaster appeal, where his company TriGranits double award winning Silesia City Centre is based. The shopping complex, which faced and overcome substantial development challenges, picked up the award for CEE Retail Development of the Year 2005 and one of the events five Grand Awards for EC Harris CEE Outstanding Development of the Year 2005 chosen from the winners of each of the six project award categories on offer. Another of TriGranits developments, Duna Residence in Budapest, received the Ober Haus CEE Residential Development of the Year award.

However one of the features of this years CEE Quality Awards event was the number of nominations and eventual winners from outside the core market cities of Warsaw, Prague and Budapest as the industry focus spreads further east and south, as well as to the secondary cities of the Central European axis. Swissotel in Moscow received the Bank BPH CEE Commercial Development of the Year 2005 award as well as being short-listed for the CEE Building Design of the Year 2005 award (the only pure design award), while another Moscow project, the Krekshino National Logistics Park, picked up the award for Colliers International CEE Industrial & Logistics Development of the Year 2005. The Grand Duke Palace in Vilnius, Lithuania by Middle Europe Investments picked up the CEE Mixed Use Development of the Year 2005 award, and Bucharest Business Park by Prague based developer Portland Trust landed the DTZ CEE Office Development of the Year 2005 award.

One of the highlights of the evening was the announcement of EC Harris as CEE Commercial Services Company of the Year. Mike Pearce, Senior European Partner of EC Harris was at the event to receive the award and said:

These are the most important awards for our sector in the Central & Eastern European region. This is a wonderful achievement for our company as there are so many good service companies in this category including law firms, accountants and other service providers, so it is great news even to be considered for the hat-trick!

Impression of the welcome reception.

Another two companies enjoyed double success, with ORCO Group lifting the Eurohypo CEE Developer of the Year 2005 and also its founder and president Jean Francois Ott landing one of the Grand Awards for CEE Industry Professional of the Year 2005, while one of the surprise packages