Property Dinner
The East Midlands property business celebrated a string of notable deals.
Rising in the east
This year's East Midlands Property Dinner was for the first time managed by midlands business Insider. Editor Jim Pendrill reports
Never underestimate the power of a close- knit community in getting deals done. The particular strength of the East Midlands commercial property sector is a case in point, and its highs of the year were cause for much celebration at this year's East Midlands Property Dinner.
Almost 500 diners packed the East Midlands Conference Centre for
an event that the team here at Insider were delighted to manage for
the first time.
As ever at awards ceremonies certain deals, projects and individuals tend to come to the fore and so it proved here.
In our first award the outstanding work of architects Maber Associates and founder Colin Maber swept the board and deservedly so. These are schemes that are really making a lasting impression on the East Midlands landscape.
The same is true of our deal of the year, the immensely significant ng2 scheme in Nottingham, a project that also took the honours in our creative land category.
Bob Hingston was a particularly popular winner in our community impact award for his tremendous work for Leicester Housing Association, while the personality award shortlist brought together three big hitters who between them really are a major driving force in the region.
Keeping the winner, Nick Ebbs from Innes England, off the stage was of course a major operation but Nick thankfully kept his acceptance speech to a "dead chuffed" response.
But the dinner was more than just about awards. This year we raised a terrific £312,000 for ChildLine, and after a special request on the night for help in finding new accommodation in Nottingham the charity was inundated with offers of help. Indeed we have since received a personal thankyou from ChildLine chairwoman Esther Rantzen who told us: "I want to say a heartfelt thankyou to everyone who dug deep into their pockets to make this fantastic donation. Your generosity will help ChildLine answer more children every day."
Finally ahead of next year's awards one small plea - we want to see even more entries. I'm sure you'll agree that the winners all deserve their credit, but there are also plenty more fantastic schemes out there that we want to hear about. So do please look out for our nomination forms and information about next year's awards in this magazine in the New Year. Meantime if you have any comments about this year's awards please email me at
jim.pendrill@newsco.com
