Altice USA moving HQ from Bethpage to Long Island City
Patrick Drahi, founder of Altice N.V., speaks at Altice USA in Bethpage on May 23, 2017. Credit: Barry Sloan
Altice USA plans to move its headquarters from Bethpage to Long Island City, Queens, by the end of 2017 to be closer to advertisers and business partners, the company told employees Wednesday.
The provider of broadband, cable and telephone services said the move to rented space will relocate top executives and corporate departments, such as finance, human resources and communications.
An undisclosed number of Altice employees will be transferred to the new headquarters from Bethpage and from an office in Manhattan.
The headquarters change will be accompanied by improvements to the Bethpage office to allow for the consolidation of five satellite offices located within 10 miles of Bethpage. They include the Woodbury studios of News 12 Long Island.
Altice, which owns 25 percent of Newsday Media Group, said the changes will not result in job reductions in the metropolitan area.
“We remain committed to our presence on Long Island,” company spokeswoman Lisa Anselmo said Wednesday.
The Bethpage building will be designated the “core Altice USA Operations Center” for the United States, serving customers in 21 states, she said.
By the end of 2019, the 558,000-square-foot building at 1111 Stewart Ave. will be home to News 12, two call centers that handle customer inquiries, engineering and technology departments and sales operations.
Optimum stores and service centers on Long Island are not affected by yesterday’s announcement.
The company owns the Bethpage building, which served as the headquarters of aerospace giant Grumman Corp. before being purchased by Cablevision Systems Corp. for its headquarters in 1997.
Altice USA was formed last year after Netherlands-based Altice N.V. bought Cablevision and Suddenlink of St. Louis. Altice USA has a nationwide workforce of 15,300, according to a securities filing posted Monday. The company has announced plans to go public this year.
The Long Island Association, the region’s largest business group, expressed concern about the loss of the Altice headquarters. CEO Kevin Law said, “It’s bad news for Long Island because whenever the decision-makers of a company work and live outside of Nassau and Suffolk counties and are not involved in our communities, we become vulnerable to further workforce reductions.”
