New Rechler HQ built as a showcase

At first, when you walk into the 20,000-square-foot glass and steel building on the South Service Road of the Long Island Expressway in Plainview, you might think you are in a new museum.

There is gigantic, colorful artwork on the walls depicting Long Island history. In the lobby there is a lifelike statue of a man seated in a chair, asleep with a book on his chest. There are open spaces throughout the building, a spiral staircase, model airplanes from this and other eras.

But you are not in a museum. You are inside the new headquarters of Rechler Equity Partners, Long Island's largest commercial landlord. The company moved into the building just before Thanksgiving from a workaday facility in Melville that was only 9,000 square feet.

Cousins Mitchell and Gregg Rechler, partners in the firm their grandfather William started half a century ago, spent $7.5 million renovating the former warehouse. The land on which it sits was originally owned by their grandfather.

"What this building says is that we've been building work spaces for other companies for more than 50 years," said Mitchell Rechler. "We were always cutting-edge. This has become a showplace for potential clients."

Visitors are escorted through the building, which includes a gym and a golf simulator for Rechler's 33 employees and their guests. The clients get to see the kind of building theirs could look like. But the Rechlers said what the clients want to do and can afford comes before high style.

The renovations to the building provided 100 construction jobs, and Rechler received $5 million in bonds, given for job creation, to help finance the work. The building is certified as green. "This building shows all the ways you can push the envelope and still be energy-efficient," Gregg Rechler said.