We arrived unfashionably early to the awards ceremony and had plenty of time to graze cheese cubes and six-dollar beers before filtering into the main event. We were delighted, as we did the red-carpet walk past the paparazzi and two giant gold statues, that a photographer insisted on snapping our photo even as we pulled jackets over our faces in our best Sean Penn impersonation. It ain’t easy injecting glamor into the 2005 residential real estate sales awards, but the Chicago Association of Realtors was determined.
Inside the Grand Ballroom at Navy Pier, a space that looks a little like Radio City Music Hall, we were seated at table 84, a convenient place from which to take it all in, separated from Lake Michigan by only a pane of glass and a short plaza. Luckily there was a Jumbotron above the tiny speakers in the distance, projecting their every move on a giant screen framed by two more Oscar-like statues, though of course, if you looked closely, these ones were clutching the Realtor logo.
CAR President Nancy Suvarnamani, CIPS, CRB, ABR, MA (VIP goes without saying) regaled the crowd with statistics from the last decade, halcyon days when the sales volume clocked by the association has risen mightily, with never a year-to-year dip. Amid the celebration, though, there seemed to be an undercurrent of concern that those days are ending. Suvarnamani praised top producers for excelling in “today’s FSBO-mentality marketplace,” and the leader of an invocation prayed to the almighty “not for lesser burdens, but for stronger backs.”
There seemed to be no shortage of strong backs in attendance, and some of the strongest belonged to a group of Platinum Award winners who sold more than 300 units and / or — hold onto your fake Oscar — more than $97 million worth of real estate in 2005. Those agents were Ted Sveda, Jr., of American Invsco; Ralph Oliva, of Coldwell Banker; Robert Picciariello, of Prello Realty Group; Jeff Lowe, of Century 21 Sussex & Reilly; Iris Ade, of MCL; Emily Sachs Wong, of Koenig & Strey GMAC; Arthur Cirignani, of Chicago Realty Partners; Chris Feurer, of Koenig & Strey GMAC; and Barbara Stewart, of Rubloff.
After what was, it must be said, an awards presentation that puts the real Oscars to shame for efficiency, stalwart agents retired to one of two parties sponsored by mortgage companies — one at Riva (Guaranteed Rate) and another onboard the Odyssey (Wells Fargo). Which one was better? They were about tied from where we stood, though no one seemed to be having half as much fun as the table of Latino women singing boisterously in Spanish upstairs on the Odyssey.
Carrie Glista and Jennifer Leong, of First Chicago Realty.
Tracy Taylor, of Taylor Realty; Jim Kinney, of Rubloff; and Suni Karim, of SK Properties Group.
Left: Chris Feurer, of Koenig & Strey GMAC. Right: Ted Mazola, of New West Realty.
