East Meadow makeover

Listen to this article

A tired shopping center and office building property in East Meadow is about to get a wake-up call.

Known as East Meadow Plaza, the 11.16-acre site at 1900 Hempstead Turnpike is home to 132,332 square feet of retail space and a five-story, 82,000-square-foot office building.

The more than $4 million project to refresh the property is being headed by the Mineola-based triumvirate of Ambrosino Consultant Corp., Combined Resources Consulting and Design and ACC Real Estate Services.

“We want to reposition the property so it’s more attractive to today’s tenants,” said ACC principal John Proscia.

Built in 1971, East Meadow Plaza is owned by the Weiss family, which runs Kurt Weiss Greenhouses, headquartered in Center Moriches. Wayne Weiss, a company vice president and fourth generation member of the business, said the East Meadow center was once a farm owned by his great grandfather Otto Muller that grew azaleas and other landscaping flora dating back more than 100 years.

When he was a child, Weiss lived in a farmhouse on the property, which briefly raised chickens during the 1940s to support the war effort. Besides their main location in Center Moriches, the family owns land in Florida, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and about a half-dozen sites on Long Island, which have wholesale greenhouse operations that produce bedding plants, flowers and poinsettia for the Christmas season.

East Meadow Plaza is the only shopping center and multi-tenant office building owned by the family and Weiss knows it’s ripe for sprucing up.

“We want to get it up to standards,” he said.

Towards that goal, the upcoming renovation project will include new facades and a new parking lot for the retail center. The office building, which is nearly half vacant, will get new common areas, new restrooms, new windows and several systems upgrades, according to Michael Ambrosino, principal of Ambrosino Consultant Corp., who will head the project.

“We’re going to bring the building up to current market standards,” Ambrosino said. “We believe it will be a great location for medical office tenants.”

In the retail portion of the property, the 30,600-square-foot Best Market store is being transformed into a new Lidl supermarket, which is scheduled to open next summer. Other major tenants include a 15,660-square-foot World Gym, a 10,824-square-foot Dollar Deal and a 9,600-square-foot Rite Aid store.

Ambrosino, who is joined in the business by son Steven and daughter Kristen, is a 35-year construction industry veteran, who is currently working on other projects in the New York metropolitan area, Boston, Philadelphia, Charlotte, N.C. and Charleston, S.C.

Proscia, who will head up the leasing and property management at East Meadow Plaza, has spent 45 years on the brokerage side of the Long Island commercial real estate business. In 2016, Proscia left Colliers International to join forces with Ambrosino and architect Salvatore Ferrara of Combined Resources to put the three affiliated companies under one umbrella.

Since then, the companies have partnered to work on renovation and leasing projects at 90 Merrick Road in East Meadow, 275 Broadhollow Road in Melville and 1600 Stewart Ave. in Westbury. The combined companies now have 47 employees and annual revenue of about $50 million.

Renovation work on East Meadow Plaza is expected to start early next year.

n [email protected]