Professional Physical Therapy picks new Melville HQ location

A major operator of physical and occupational therapy centers has changed the destination for its new headquarters and billing office in Melville, officials said.

Professional Physical Therapy will rent 30,000 square feet at 576 Broad Hollow Rd., long the home of insurer New York Life. The building is on the Route 110 corridor near the Huntington Hilton.

Professional Physical Therapy, also known as PPT, had planned to use the same amount of space 1.5 miles north at 320 South Service Rd. off the Long Island Expressway.

“We wanted to be out here” in Suffolk County, said George Papadopoulos, PPT’s chief development officer and co-founder.

“When that one fell through, we immediately wanted to find another one,” he said last week, referring to the South Service Road and Broad Hollow Road locations.

PPT now rents space in Uniondale and Whitestone, Queens, for its headquarters and billing office, respectively. The combined office in Suffolk will more than double administrative space.

Papadopoulos said the company had considered moving its administrative center to New Jersey or New Hampshire.

Changing its Melville location won’t alter the $3.7 million that PPT plans to spend on building renovations, including construction of an internal mezzanine, according to Anthony J. Catapano, executive director of the Suffolk County Industrial Development Agency.

However, the tax breaks awarded by the IDA last week to PPT are less than the $1.6 million that was approved in November. PPT now will save $872,520, including a reduction of $612,480 in property taxes over 15 years, or 29 percent.

The company assured the IDA that its Melville payroll will total 161 by 2021, including 30 new jobs.

But Catapano said PPT will take longer to fulfill its earlier assurance to the IDA of having 191 employees in the county, which was made when it planned to move into the South Service Road location.

Catapano said about 30 PPT employees who work in Queens have said they won’t commute to Long Island.

PPT’s future home on Broad Hollow Road was supposed to be the headquarters for NeuLion Inc., a publicly traded business that provides on-demand video streaming services.

NeuLion had purchased the building for a corporate office rather than move out of state, Toni J. Hoverkamp, NeuLion’s attorney, said in May.

However, NeuLion then sold the building, and the new owner will rent to PPT, according to Catapano. He said last week that he doesn’t know what NeuLion’s future plans are.

NeuLion spokesman Chris Wagner told Newsday last week: “We don’t have any plans to leave Long Island . . . We are very happy with Long Island, and we continue to grow very nicely here.”

NeuLion was co-founded by Nancy Li, wife of billionaire Charles B. Wang, the co-founder of computer software giant CA Technologies and minority owner of the New York Islanders.

Wang serves on NeuLion’s board of directors, and the couple owns nearly 29 percent of the company’s stock.