LIPA plans to buy Capital One's former Melville offices
LIPA plans to buy the former Capital One building at 1307 Walt Whitman Rd. in Melville. Credit: Rick Kopstein
The Long Island Power Authority plans to buy Capital One's former offices in Melville as the neighborhood sees a handful of properties trade hands.
LIPA plans to purchase the three-story building at 1307 Walt Whitman Rd. through PSEG Long Island, which will act as LIPA's agent, though LIPA will own the property, Long Island Business News reported.
The purchase, which has not yet closed, will "help to reduce operational costs and provide cost savings to customers," said Katy Tatzel, director of corporate communications for PSEG, though she declined to share any further details about the planned acquisition. The Melville property spans 19.34 acres, according to property records.
LIPA has bought Long Island properties before, purchasing the former Country Fair Entertainment and Event Park in Medford in 2024 for a storage depot, Newsday reported. But its latest planned purchase follows several notable transactions in Melville.
In the past few months, NYU Langone purchased two Melville buildings for $135.5 million for a new hospital campus and the health nonprofit MediSys Health Network bought 576 Broadhollow Rd. to expand its operations, according to the commercial real estate brokerage Cushman & Wakefield's second quarter report on Long Island's office market.
Melville has long been a "top tier" area for office tenants because of its central location near the border of Nassau and Suffolk counties and access to the Long Island Expressway, said Rob Kuppersmith, an executive managing director at the Melville office of Cushman & Wakefield.
But the sale of the quadrangle buildings means that there's less office space in Melville to go around, which could mean higher rents in the future, said Gus Nuzzolese, an executive vice president with the commercial real estate brokerage Colliers. LIPA's decision to buy the Walt Whitman Road building is a "smart move" to hedge against future rent increases, he added.
Kuppersmith, however, said it was "too early to tell" how the NYU Langone purchase would impact Melville.
LIPA will take over the building from the McLean, Virginia-based Capital One, which decided to ditch its Walt Whitman Road offices in 2024 and rent a smaller space in Jericho because of the popularity of remote work among its employees, Newsday reported.
Capital One bought the Melville building in 2016 from First Data Corp., Newsday reported. At the time, the bank spent $25 million on the property, according to property records.
