$45 Million to Make Two Hauppauge Buildings Work Again

Two projects in front of the Suffolk County Industrial Development Agency this summer put a number on something Hauppauge tenants have been feeling for a while. Between them, a Rechler family entity and a machine tool manufacturer are spending $45.4 million in the same few blocks of the industrial park, and almost none of it buys new ground.

133,755 square feet the owner calls functionally obsolete

REP 80 Arkay Drive LLC, based at 85 South Service Road in Plainview, is renovating roughly 133,755 square feet of a 200,000 square foot building at 80 Arkay Drive in Hauppauge. Its principals are Gregg Rechler at 30 percent, Mitchell Rechler at 30 percent, Judith Rechler at 15 percent and a family trust holding the remaining 15 percent.

The agency's project abstract states the reason without softening it. The space is functionally obsolete, and the applicant intends to redevelop it to bring it up to today's standards, including HVAC and electrical upgrades and tenant fixtures and equipment.

The budget is $7 million of renovation, $3 million of warehousing, fixtures and office equipment, $106,330 of legal fees and $236,088 of financial charges, for total project costs of $10,342,418. Across the renovated area that is roughly $77 a square foot all in, and about $52 a foot in construction alone, spent to make existing Hauppauge space leasable again.

There is no tenant on the abstract. The applicant plans to lease to one or more tenants for technology, research and development, or manufacturing and related office use, and projects 25 jobs in the first year at an average salary of $96,407 and 75 more in the second at $106,353. The work itself is estimated to create 61 construction jobs.

$313 a foot to buy the building instead of leasing one

Basaran Grinder Corp. builds high-precision CNC grinding machines and automated manufacturing systems out of 15,000 square feet on 1.35 acres at 100 Laser Court. Its president, Murat Basaran, owns the company outright.

Rather than lease more space, the company is buying the roughly 30,000 square foot industrial building at 160 Oser Avenue for $9.4 million, which works out to about $313 a square foot, then adding 25,000 square feet to it and improving both buildings into a single manufacturing campus covering machine tool manufacturing, engineering, assembly, testing and precision grinding.

The abstract itemizes $2 million of renovation at Oser Avenue and $2 million at Laser Court, $7 million for the new addition, $400,000 of engineering and architectural fees, $12 million of manufacturing equipment split between the two sites, $1.7 million of non-manufacturing equipment, $250,000 in legal fees and $300,000 in financial charges. The total is $35,050,000, with an estimated 95 construction jobs.

The employment line is the tell

Basaran employs 23 people in Suffolk County at an average salary of $95,612. The project adds three positions in the first year and three in the second. Six.

A $35 million project that creates six permanent jobs is not a weak project. It is what precision manufacturing capital spending looks like now. Twelve million dollars of the total is machinery, and the machinery is the point. The jobs the deal protects are the 23 already there, at salaries well above the Nassau and Suffolk average, and the argument for the abatement is that those stay here rather than following the equipment to somewhere with cheaper square footage.

The Arkay Drive project is the mirror image. It creates no jobs of its own and projects 100 inside tenants who have not signed yet. One applicant is a manufacturer becoming a landlord to itself. The other is a landlord betting that modern space in Hauppauge will find a manufacturer.

Where both stand

The agency approved inducement resolutions for both on June 25, 2026, Basaran by seven votes to zero and the Arkay Drive project six to zero with one member recused, and held public hearings on both on July 20. Both appeared on the August 13 board agenda. The next regular board meeting is September 24.

What it means for members

If you lease industrial or flex space in Hauppauge and your term is up inside two years, price your renewal against buildings that have just absorbed $50 to $80 a square foot of work, not against what you signed last time.

Two owners with nothing in common, one a developer and one a tenant who decided to become an owner, reached the same conclusion independently this summer: the cheapest route to modern space here runs through an existing building. That is a supply signal, and it reaches your renewal letter before it reaches anywhere else. Start the landlord conversation twelve months out and ask specifically what capital work is planned in your building, because who pays for it is negotiable only before it is scheduled.