Creative Bath Products makes $5M donation to Lustgarten, MSK

Central Islip-based Creative Bath Products is donating more than $5 million in proceeds from a building sale to two area organizations that help fight cancer.

The private label manufacturer is donating about $4 million to Woodbury-based The Lustgarten Foundation, and another $1.3 million to New York-based cancer care system Memorial Sloan Kettering, after it sold a warehouse at 555 North Research Dr. in Central Islip that was no longer needed.

About 80 percent of proceeds of the building sale went to the two groups, said Bob Weiss, chief operating officer at Creative Bath Products.

Weiss said it made the donation to The Lustgarten Foundation, which was created in 1998 to raise money to fight pancreatic cancer, because Creative Bath Products founder Mathias “Mat” Meinzinger died of the illness in 2010.

“Mat was a real humanist, always giving people a second chance to rehabilitate themselves,” Weiss said. “If you were down on your luck, he would give you a break. That’s what he was all about. He would be so pleased by this.”

The Lustgarten Foundation is named in honor of Marc Lustgarten, the former vice chairman of Cablevision Systems Corp. and chairman of Madison Square Garden, who died of pancreatic cancer.

James Dolan, executive chairman of The Madison Square Garden Co. and former chief executive of Cablevision, and Charles Dolan, executive chairman of AMC Networks and former chairman of Cablevision, helped establish the Lustgarten Foundation.

The foundation has directed $154 million to research since its inception. The organization said 100 percent of every dollar donated goes directly to pancreatic cancer research.