C&W beat out three other finalists, including CB Richard Ellis for a deal involving the leasing of nearly 818,000 sf at Warren Corporate Center, Warren, NJ, to Citigroup. It was the largest single transaction in the past year. The others were Grubb & Ellis for a deal involving the Frisch School's purchase of 120 W. Century Rd. in Paramus, NJ, subsequently converting the office building into a school; and Jaime M. Weiss Realty Co. for a three-office lease transaction related to North Fork bank's acquisition of the Trust Co. of New Jersey.

The judging was carried out by an outside panel that included Robert Cutlip, SVP of Highwoods Properties of Raleigh, NC; Stephen Thode, director of the Murray H. Goodman Center for Real Estate Studies at Lehigh University; Philip Kirschner, EVP of the New Jersey Business & Industry Association; and James DeLisle, Runstad Professor of Real Estate at the University of Washington.

The group also handed out several achievement awards, headed by the Lifetime Achievement Award given to Peter Cocoziello, president and founder of Advance Realty Group of Bedminster, NJ. Impact Awards were dealt to AMB Property Corp., headed by Bruce Freedman, and to Ivy Realty of Montvale, NJ, headed by Russell Warren and Anthony DiTommaso Jr. And the engineering and consulting firm Schoor DePalma won the Industry Service Award, which was accepted by Stephen DePalma.