A long-time Garden City resident has purchased one of the area's largest and most architecturally significant properties, the former Bristol-Myers Squib Corporate Campus located on Stewart Avenue and Endo Boulevard in East Garden City, and has renamed it The Business and Research Center at Garden City.

Joseph Farkas, President of Bellmore-based Metropolitan Realty Associates LLC, a real estate investment firm, purchased the Paul Rudolph-designed building at 1000 Stewart Ave. with long-time joint venture equity partner New York City-based Angelo Gordon & Co., The building originally was constructed as the headquarters of Endo Pharmaceuticals and was completed in 1964.

"This is a unique building in a superior location of Nassau County. It is not a generic office or industrial property," said Farkas. "We plan to undertake an extensive, but respectful renovation of the property which will allow us to lease the building to a mix of tenants in an effort to bring more than 400 jobs back to the community. The opportunity to redevelop such an important piece of real estate in a neighborhood that means so much to my family was too good to pass up."

Farkas, who lives in Garden City with his wife and two daughters, paid $7.39 million to Bristol-Myers Squibb for the property.

Described as a "Fortress for Pharmaceuticals" by architectural publications at the time it was completed in 1964, the campus is comprised of two buildings containing 190,000 square feet on 7.55 acres. The main building, 1000 Stewart Avenue, is a 165,000-foot, turreted, cast-in-place-concrete building which received several awards for its bold design by Paul Rudolph. The building ranks among the major projects designed by Rudolph, who was considered America's most-talented Late Modernist architect. The second property, 500 Endo Boulevard is a freestanding, two-story, 25,000 square foot building also designed by Rudolph and constructed several years later.

Metropolitan plans to restore and redevelop the property and lease space to multiple tenants, including businesses seeking office, warehouse, distribution and manufacturing space as well as turnkey laboratory space. The Town of Hempstead Industrial Development Agency has granted Metropolitan a PILOT (payment in lieu of taxes) program that will put property taxes at $2.37 per square foot, considerably below competitive properties in Nassau County.

The building is one of only a handful of works on Long Island designed by the well-known architect. After Endo's sale in 1969 to E.I. du Pont de Nemours and Co. the building continued to be used as a pharmaceutical plant until about two years ago by a succession of companies that included DuPont Pharmaceuticals and Bristol-Myers Squibb Pharma. The building never previously was available for lease to a variety of tenants.

Metropolitan, a national real estate investment and development firm established in 2001 by real-estate industry veteran Farkas, has appointed Corporate National Realty LLC of Woodbury, NY, as exclusive agent for the building. Douglas Omstrom and Thomas DiMicelli, senior directors of the firm, will handle marketing of the property.

The transaction, which closed Aug. 18, was brokered by DiMicelli and Omstrom along with Robert T. Morford and Gerald E. Moore Jr. of the Garibaldi Group, of Chatham, N.J.