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Garden City Gets Lifetime: Consumer Products Company Agrees to Lease Space in Former Bristol-Myers Squibb Pharma Complex

Posted on: Friday, 19 May 2006, 18:02 CDT

By Elizabeth Moore, Newsday, Melville, N.Y.

May 19--Lifetime Brands Inc., the designer, developer and marketer of nationally branded consumer products and one of Long Island's biggest companies, has signed a 15-year lease for 114,474 square feet of space in the former Bristol-Myers Squibb Pharma complex in Garden City.

Now based in Westbury, Lifetime Brands will use the Garden City space for executive offices, a research and development center, a warehouse and showrooms for its Farberware, KitchenAid, Pfaltzgraff, Cuisinart and other houseware and kitchenware lines. The move planned for December will more than double the size of Lifetime Brands' headquarters from its current 47,000 square feet.

According to filings with the Hempstead Industrial Development Agency, Lifetime expects to add 49 full-time positions in the next two years. The fate of the Westbury building is unclear. Metropolitan Realty Associates bought the drug company's former 7.6-acre, 186,500- square-foot complex at Stewart Avenue and Endo Boulevard for $7.4 million last summer, with president Joseph A. Farkas announcing plans to renovate the facility and convert it to a mixed-use facility, dubbed the Business and Research Center at Garden City. The Hempstead IDA is providing a 10-year property tax abatement on the complex.

The distinctive turreted modernist lab and a companion building were designed in the 1960s by architect Paul Rudolph and originally served as the world headquarters of Endo Laboratories. Bristol-Myers Squibb Pharma closed its 350-employee facilities there in late 2003.

The move "solidifies our commitment to continued expansion in our industry, but also to our deep roots in the Long Island community," Lifetime Brands' vice chairman and chief operating officer Ronald Shiftan said yesterday, calling it part of the company's plan for "long-term strategic growth."

The company will pay $40 million in rent over the 15-year contract. Lifetime employs 190 people on Long Island, 13.62 percent of its overall workforce.

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Copyright (c) 2006, Newsday, Melville, N.Y.

Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News.

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Source: Newsday, Melville, N.Y.

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