City Quays 1 Wins Commercial Prize at the NI RICS Awards 2016

City Quays 1 office building has been awarded the Commercial prize at the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) Awards, Northern Ireland 2016.

City Quays 1 office building has been awarded the Commercial prize at the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) Awards, Northern Ireland 2016.

The Commercial award honours an excellent commercial property development whether retail, office, leisure, industrial or mixed use. RICS were looking for evidence of a commercially successful project.

The judges had this to say about City Quays 1:

“A modern office building occupying a prominent riverside site, City Quays provides an excellent standard of accommodation that has attracted hi-tech companies and global lawyers as tenants. The quality of materials and finishes is unusually high for a speculative development in Belfast where office rents are relatively low, but it has paid off with the building fully let at rents which match the highest recorded locally. The flexible spaces and services enable the tenants to provide a working environment that helps them to retain staff. Remarkably, for a commercial project it has been designed to a BREEAM Excellent standard.”

City Quays 1 Wins Commercial Prize at the NI RICS Awards 2016
Belfast Harbour Property Director Graeme Johnston accepting the Commercial Award at the RICS Awards Northern Ireland 2016.

Graeme Johnston, Property Director, Belfast Harbour said: 

“Recognition such as this is a testament to the hard work put in by the team working on the City Quays 1 development.  The building was fully let in 9 months to significant organisations operating in the knowledge economy  showing the need for this type of office building and we are carrying that into City Quays 2 office, currently under construction. Well done to all the winners at the Awards and we look forward to the national event later in the year.”

The eight category winners- Building Conservation, Community Benefit, Commercial, Design through Innovation, Infrastructure, Regeneration, Residential and Tourism & Leisure- will now progress  to the UK RICS Awards Grand Final on 14 October 2016 in London.