March of Dimes marshals real estate community
- Brett Wilderman, left, and Brandon Hall, event honorees and principals, Forstone Capital.
The 20th annual March of Dimes Fairfield County Real Estate Award breakfast drew a packed-house crowd of 700 to the Hilton Stamford Hotel & Executive Meeting Center recently.
Forstone partners and co-founders Brandon Hall and Brett Wilderman were the event honorees.
Since Forstone”™s founding in 2007 the New Canaan boyhood friends”™ company has acquired more than 1.2 million square feet of real estate. Its services include property management, asset management, construction and leasing.
The breakfast”™s top sponsors were The Ashforth Co., which was the event”™s inaugural honoree and which additionally provided this year”™s marketing and management support; Building and Land Technology, the 2003 event honoree; and Forstone Capital. A Who”™s Who of county companies filled out the gold, silver, bronze and “Fund the Mission” sponsorships, 60 in all.
The event across the years has raised more than $6 million toward funding the March of Dimes mission to promote term pregnancies and to help preemies and their families. The 2015 breakfast alone brought in $56,000 via texting NICU to 41444. (NICU ”“ an acronym for neonatal intensive care unit ”“ is a common reference at March of Dimes events and is pronounced “nickew”.)
The top donation by text won a three-course lunch and cooking demonstration for up to 15 persons with Chef Stephen Lewandowski at Harlan Publick in Norwalk.
“The Real Estate Award Breakfast honors outstanding individuals or companies whose commercial real estate activities have significantly enhanced the local community,” March of Dimes said in a prepared statement.
“We are proud to recognize Forstone for their area revitalization efforts and applaud their principals for their leadership and community advocacy,” said Ed Tonnessen, chairman of the Real Estate Awards committee and executive managing director at Jones Lang LaSalle.
Stamford Mayor David Martin offered an upbeat appraisal of the host city”™s health, noting citywide unemployment had fallen from 5.1 percent a year ago to 4.1 percent now. He cited $6 billion in construction now underway and an apartment occupancy rate of 96 percent. “The reason our rents are so high is because our occupancy rates are astronomical,” he said.
Martin ticked off a number of scientific breakthroughs ”“ the theory of relativity, the development of penicillin and the polio vaccine ”“ and said March of Dimes progress is fueled by science.
“I take it as a great disappointment that ignorance of science is seen by some as a way to be more popular today,” he said.
Martin said science was not about faith, but investing in science nonetheless demonstrated a worthy faith in the scientific process. “How quaint, my parents and grandparents put those dimes into those cardboard boxes on store counters,” he said. “Their faith in science obliterated polio. It changed the world.”