For some, Canon parking not picture-perfect

Companies that construct big buildings like them to be seen in full, from all sides, to present the business' image to the public. But it hasn't worked out that way for Canon U.S.A.'s giant North American headquarters building off the Long Island Expressway at Exit 49 in Melville.

The buzz at business meetings these days is how unfortunate it is that the north side of the building, which faces the LIE, is partially obscured by a three-deck parking lot. (There's another three-deck parking lot on the south side, but that's way off the expressway.)

"It's architecturally challenged," Desmond Ryan, executive director of the developers' group Association for a Better Long Island, said of the five-story Canon building, which is Long Island's largest construction project and is to open next year.

"The location of the [parking] decks has a profound impact" on the view, Ryan said.

Of course, those were the plans, because digging an underground lot would be prohibitively expensive and, without the decks, 70 percent to 80 percent of the property would be parking spaces, said Seymour Liebman, Canon's executive vice president.

"We wanted the employees to walk right into the building" from the decks, Liebman said. "This makes it very convenient for them."

Liebman said the building's exterior is completed and work is being done on the interior.

Eventually, Liebman said, some 2,700 Canon employees will work at the building. There will be 200 surface parking spots and 1,600 parking deck sites.

Developer Mitchell Rechler, whose Rechler Equities building is down the road from Canon on South Service Road in Plainview, agreed underground parking would be incredibly costly but added, "I'm disappointed that the building was designed with the parking decks" where they are. "I would like to believe they could have come up with a better solution."