Real estate professionals have until the end of the week to submit a property for consideration in the second edition of the John Jacob Astor Awards at Expo Real 2013.
Real estate professionals have until the end of the week to submit a property for consideration in the second edition of the John Jacob Astor Awards at Expo Real 2013.
Organised and voted on via Expo Real's online blog, the award is named after John Jacob Astor (July 1864 - April 1912), an American businessman and member of the ultra-rich Astor family.
Speaking during a webinar on 10 September, Expo Real exhibition director Claudia Boymanns said Astor is recognised as one of the first speculative real estate investors in New York. He made his name as the first investor in the hospitality sector and was the founder of the luxurious Waldorf-Astoria hotel in New York.
In his name, Expo Real is seeking the 'most extraordinary and fascinating' contemporary commercial real estate projects. All new and converted commercial real estate developments or mixed-use real estate completed between 2007-2013 are eligible for submission for the award.
The entry phase for the 2013 John Jacob Astor has started and 16 projects, including hotel and museum properties, from all over Europe and the US have been submitted. Properties completed between 2007 and 2013 can be submitted until the end of the week (13 September).
The submission process involves a brief profile, outlining the project's unique attributes and three uploaded photographs.
The voting phase by readers of the blog will then begin.
A total of 24 projects were submitted for the inaugural competition in 2012. The Hilton Garden Inn Hotel on the Golden Horn in Istanbul, which was honoured for its sustainability, came out on top with 23,240 votes. The prize was a 20 m2 exhibition space worth €10,000. The hotel is exhibiting at Expo Real for the first time this year.
Astor may be best known for properties and hotels, but he was also the richest causality of the infamous Titanic disaster. He was among the 1,514 people who went down with the ‘unsinkable’ ocean liner when it struck an iceberg on its maiden voyage on the morning of 15 April 1912.
