Long Island-based Quality King Distributors to build industrial

Long Island Business News, May 21, 2004 by Nick Anastasi

Quality King Distributors Inc., the largest private company on Long Island, plans to build a 560,000-square-foot warehouse and distribution facility in the Brookhaven Industrial Park to support its growing operations.

The proposed building would be one of the largest of its kind on Long Island built in many years. Few locations in the region, aside from the Northrop Grumman site in Bethpage and the ELM Global Logistics site in Brentwood, would rival the proposed Quality King facility in sheer bulk.

As part of its plan, Quality King, which distributes pharmaceutical, health and beauty products, is in contract to acquire 37 acres in the Brookhaven Industrial Park and has submitted an application for an economic incentive package to the Town of Brookhaven's Department of Economic Development.

The proposed site is located in Brookhaven's Empire Zone, a two- square-mile area in which companies can garner valuable economic incentives such as sales-tax exemptions, credit for real property taxes, wage tax credits and utility discounts.

If built, the industrial goliath is expected to bring more than 600 new jobs to the town.

Quality King Chief Operating Officer Marc Garrett said the new facility is required to keep up with growing demand and increase efficiencies. At the moment, he said the company is forced to operate on a 24-hour work cycle because of current space constraints at its facilities in Ronkonkoma and Deer Park, which total about 650,000 square feet.

Quality King has an estimated 1,400 employees and recorded sales of $2.4 billion in 2002, according to Hoover's Online.

Last September, the company said it would seek to add about 200,000 square feet of industrial space to its operations in Ronkonkoma, where it is based. But Garrett said it decided on Yaphank instead because of a scarcity of potential locations.

It would have been nice to expand in Ronkonkoma, but there is no land, Garrett said. He said the Yaphank site is not as close to Quality King's base of operations or New York City as the company would have liked, but it's where land for a development of this magnitude was available. This was a compromise we had to make.

As a result of the anticipated building in Yaphank, Garrett said the company plans to relocate its warehouse and distribution operation in Deer Park, where it owns a 100,000-square-foot facility, to Yaphank. He said the company has not determined whether it plans to sell or lease the Deer Park facility.

If all goes well with the town, Garrett said the company hopes the new facility will be up and running by next summer.

Anthony Aloisio, director of economic development for the town, said the application for the new facility indicates it would house an estimated 605 employees.

The New York State Empire Development Corp. is also considering an economic incentive package for the proposed Quality King site, but the agency would not comment on Quality King's pending application.