Hauppauge exec had early eye for security

Ted Meshover is a prime example of how absolutely unpredictable life -- and business -- can be.

About 20 years ago Meshover had franchised 13 Cohen's Fashion Optical stores on Long Island and Staten Island and in Manhattan, New Jersey and Florida after studying optometry in graduate school.

Today, long out of that business, he owns a Hauppauge-based company believed to be the only one on Long Island that has contracts to work on both One World Trade Center, formerly the Freedom Tower, and at the nearby National September 11 Memorial & Museum.

Meshover, 60, president and chief executive of the privately held Universal Security Systems Inc., found himself out of the retail eyeglass business by the end of the 1980s and inside the basement of his then-Brookville home, starting up a security company.

He is not an engineer, not even that much of a techie. But, Meshover said, he was "like George Steinbrenner," surrounding himself with the right people. His company started small, in Hicksville, but moved six years ago into a 22,000-square-foot building in Hauppauge, where its prime work is integration of security systems.

Universal Security is now designing access-control systems for all of the doors at One World Trade Center, which is currently under construction. The systems require the swipe of a card to get through a door. The contract is worth about $2.5 million, Meshover said.

At the same time, the company is making closed-circuit television and access-control systems at the memorial museum, which is expected to be dedicated this Sept. 11. The museum contract is worth about $4 million.

There is a certain amount of pride, Meshover said, in securing the contracts from the Port Authority. "We're getting the opportunity to rebuild," Meshover said. "We're working on sacred soil. We're there to improve and advance security measures they had there at the time."

Meshover said he took advantage of any opportunity to sell the franchise stores and go into security systems. "I saw security as something that had a lot of potential," he said. "Obviously with 9/11, I didn't make a mistake."