Leading Midland property specialists Stoford and Gallan won the Deal of the Year – Over 50,000 sq ft category at the IAS (Industrial Agents Society) Awards in London.
The joint venture partners were presented with the award at the biggest industrial property event of the year for the 435,780sq ft pre-let of Cabot Park near Bristol to the Co-operative Group.
The 33 acres of land were originally purchased from The Crown Estate by AXA Real Estate, the leading real estate portfolio and asset manager in Europe, on behalf of Stoford and Gallan, having been occupied by Honda as part of its UK vehicle storage facility.
The pre-let, which was supported by agents TRW Real Estate, Deloitte Real Estate and Nigel Lawrence Partnership beat off the challenge of no less than 27 other entries in the same category from across the UK.
The £38m state of the art regional distribution centre serving almost 500 Co-operative food stores was designed and developed by Stoford and Gallan in their first joint venture.
Stoford Joint Managing Director Dan Gallagher and Gallan Director Karen Wilson stepped up to receive the trophy from guest speaker John Sergeant in front of 428 guests at the Park Lane Hotel.
The judges Don Bailey of Chancerygate, Stuart Davies of John Lewis, Chris Nicoll of F&C REIT Asset Management, and Robin Woodbridge of Prologis announced that the winning entry was “a fantastic achievement in what was a creative piece of deal making, resulting in a strong asset for the fund”.
Rob Awford, AXA Real Estate Fund Manager, said: “This is a well-deserved win and recognises an excellent scheme that saw all the parties involved work extremely well together to achieve a first class result which delivered on our objectives.”
Dan Gallagher, Joint Managing Director of Stoford said: “The entire team worked tirelessly across all stages of this major project to ensure that it became a reality and we’re delighted that the scheme has received such industry recognition.”
