From the archives: Investor buys Grumman property

This story was originally published in Newsday on January 15, 1997

The largest building owned by NorthropGrumman Corp. in Bethpage has been sold to a company owned by Brooklyn trash recycler and landlord Joseph Lostritto.

The buyer of Plant 2, a 900,000-square-foot former factory building, is Steel-Los III, a family-owned company that says it intends to renovate, subdivide and lease the property.

The site - actually one 828,500-square-foot building and two smaller, adjoining ones - were purchased just before year end as an investment, said Reid Berch, a broker with Cushman & Wakefield, which has been disposing of NorthropGrumman properties.

In an interview yesterday, Lostritto said he planned to divide the property into spaces as small as 40,000 square feet. He said he hoped the possibility of low-priced energy from a co-generation power plant at the Bethpage defense site would make his building attractive to prospective tenants.

We're excited about the activity we're getting for the property," Lostritto said.

Lostritto, said to be well known as an industrial landlord in Brooklyn and Queens, also owns an office building in Roslyn.

About a year ago, Steel-Los purchased a 400,000-square-foot plant that was owned by defense contractor Edo Corp. in College Point, Queens. Lostritto said he had divided the Edo plant and rented out 80 percent of the space.

Terms of the Bethpage sale, Long Island's largest commerical real estate transaction in 1996 in terms of square footage, were not disclosed. However, commercial real estate experts on the Island valued the deal at $10 million to $12 million, below market price. But brokers noted that there are environmental problems at the site that need to be remedied.

NorthropGrumman is working with Losritto to clean up the site.

Virtually every type of aircraft produced by the former Grumman Aerospace Corp. from World War II Hellcats through the F-14, passed through Plant 2, which was dedicated on Dec. 7, 1941.

Tom Sullivan, a NorthropGrumman real estate analyst in Bethpage, said Lostritto originally had looked at a different building on the Bethpage site for use as a plastics recycling station, but NorthropGrumman rejected the offer.
Plant 2, which Lostritto bought, is zoned for light industry.

There is only one other building larger at the 500-acre NorthropGrumman site: Plant 3, which is owned by the Navy. Nassau County is hoping to acquire 105 acres at the site owned by the Navy for use as a state Economic Development Zone, said Nassau County Legis. Edward Mangano (R-Bethpage).

Grumman has been attempting to dispose of its real estate in Bethpage since the early 1980s, when its defense programs began to be cut back. The process accelerated in 1994, when Grumman was acquired by Northrop.

The pace quickened in the past year as the Long Island economy strengthened. "We're seeing a big increase in activity in the land for industrial use," said Sullivan, adding, "The people we're bringing in here, we think will bring jobs to the area."